UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT  LOS  ANGELES 


19(4- 


JULY 

1915 


JULY 

/916 


JULY 

1917 


JUNE  NOV.  MAR.  JULY  NONt  MARJULY  NOV. 

1918      1919       I9E0 


PERCENTAGES  OF  INCREASE  IN  THE   COST  OF  LIVING  IN  THE 
UNITED  STATES,  JULY.  1914,  TO  NOVEMBER,  1920 

This  table  was  prepared  by  the  National  Industrial  Conference  Board  whose 
figures  are  regarded  as  standard  and  used  by  Federal  Reserve  Banks,  the  U.  S. 
Railroad  Administration,  and  other  organizations  which  require  the  most 
reliable  possible  figures  and  data. 

This  table  shows  the  cost  of  living — that  is,  cost  of  items  of  general  com- 
modities which  enter  into  the  average  family  living  budget.  It  does  not  refer 
to  the  large  balance  of  general  commodities  whose  average  rise  has  been 
materially  greater  than  that  of  the  particular  items  here  shown. 

The  present  curves  closely  parallel  those  prepared  by  other  authorities  and 
also  closely  parallel  those  prepared  by  the  U.  S.  Department  of  Labor  except 
for  a  period  during  1920,  in  which  case  it  has  since  been  shown  that  the  Depart- 
ment of  Labor  figures  involve  a  demonstrable  error  which  make  them  slightly 
too  high  for  this  period. 


The  High  Cost  of 
Strikes 

By 

Marshall  Olds 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  and  London 

Zbe    fmicfeerbocfcer    press 

1921 


Copyright,   1921 

by 

Marshall  Olds 

Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


/■KN 


/ 


•4 


TO    THE    MEMORY    OF 

THEODORE   ROOSEVELT 

WHO   FOUGHT 

CLASS  PRIVILEGE,  CLASS  CONSCIOUSNESS, 

AND    SIMILAR   ANTI-AMERICANISM 

WHEREVER  HE  FOUND  IT 


2081158 


PREFACE 

The  author  has  been  a  laborer — on  a  farm,  as 
assistant  in  a  railroad  repair  shop,  as  a  dock  walloper, 
as  working  boss  of  a  gang,  and  as  an  assistant  ma- 
chinist. Except  for  hiring  his  own  stenographer  and 
occasionally  an  assistant,  he  has  never  been  an 
employer. 

The  author's  fundamental  point  of  view  in  regard 
to  the  modern  labor  problem  is  that  the  man  who, 
with  his  hand  and  brain,  creates  the  production 
which  is  necessary  to  the  very  existence  of  society, 
deserves  his  full  share  not  only  of  pay  but  of  recog- 
nition and  opportunity  from  society.  He  particu- 
larly believes  therefore  that  the  industrial  worker  is 
too  valuable  a  citizen  to  be  allowed  to  remain,  or  to 
allow  himself  to  remain,  in  any  sense  a  member  of  a 
class  apart. 

The  western  farmer  once  regarded  himself  as  a 
member  of  a  class  apart.  For  years  through  the 
Granger  movement  and  various  other  class  organiza- 
tions, he  fought  both  politically  and  economically 
for  special  considerations  and  special  privileges — 

vii 


viii  Preface 

to  advance  his  own  interests  as  a  member  of  his  class 
irrespective  of  the  interests  of  the  rest  of  the  coun- 
try. But  the  farmer  to-day  occupies  his  enviable 
economic  status,  not  as  a  result  of  class  effort  but 
because  the  growth  of  the  nation  developed  an  in- 
creasing demand  for  his  services  and  his  products, 
and  because,  forgetting  class  theories,  he  put  his 
whole  energy  into  cashing  in  on  the  opportunity 
which  national  progress  offered  him. 

The  early  history  of  the  Brotherhood  of  Loco- 
motive Engineers  was  marked  by  the  same  attitude 
of  class  antagonism — with  strikes  and  threats  of 
strikes,  as  has  continued  to  mark  the  policy  of  many 
other  labor  organizations.  But  locomotive  engineers 
have  not  had  a  strike  for  a  generation  and  they 
occupy  a  recognized  position  as  the  aristocrats  of 
labor  to-day,  not  because  they  have  demanded 
special  class  consideration,  but,  on  the  contrary, 
because  they  have  adopted  the  policy  of  skilling 
themselves  individually  to  keep  pace  with  railroad 
progress — to  accept  more  responsibility — to  deliver 
a  more  valuable  service.  In  other  words,  they  have 
recognized  the  opportunity  which  American  railroad 
progress  offered,  they  have  made  good  on  that  oppor- 
tunity and  their  advancement  has  chiefly  come  just 
exactly  as  it  comes  to  the  average  other  American — 
because  he  makes  increasingly  good  on  his  job. 


Preface  ix 

American  industry  as  a  whole  has  been  making 
tremendous  progress  in  the  last  decade,  not  only 
materially  but  particularly  psychologically.  There 
is  no  question  that  there  was  a  time  when  many 
American  employers  were  so  engrossed  in  creating 
the  machinery  and  organizing  the  materials  of 
modern  industry  that  they  were  prone  to  look  upon 
the  laborer  as  more  or  less  of  a  machine  and  labor  as 
merely  a  commodity.  But  as  mechanical  equipment 
began  to  approach  its  limits  of  efficiency,  the  average 
employer  came  more  and  more  to  realize  again  the 
value  of  the  human  equation  in  industry  and  the 
importance  of  individual  skill  in  production. 

For  a  generation,  evidences  of  efforts  on  the  part 
of  employers  to  increase  the  individual  skill  and  pro- 
ductivity of  their  workers — by  voluntary  raises  in 
wages  in  proportion  to  production,  by  bonuses,  by 
sharing  profits,  by  stimulating  labor's  ambitions  for 
better  living  condition,  by  education,  and  by  many 
other  means,  have  conspicuously  multiplied.  Short- 
age of  labor  during  the  war,  and  the  exigencies  of 
the  war  brought  these  efforts  to  a  culmination  in 
which  industrial  management  adopted  a  nation- 
wide policy  of  developing  every  means  to  make  it 
possible  for  the  individual  worker  to  produce  more 
and  to  be  paid  in  proportion  to  his  production. 

In  other  words  the  war  established  on  a  nation- 


x  Preface 

wide  scale  the  soundness  of  the  policy  which  the 
farmer,  the  Brotherhood  of  Locomotive  Engineers, 
and  many  other  individual  labor  groups  had  already 
proved  out,  and  which  the  whole  development  of 
industry  in  general  was  already  conspicuously 
working  towards,  namely:  that,  considering  the 
increasing  progress  of  our  whole  nation,  with  its 
constant  demand  for  more  and  more  of  every  kind 
of  product,  its  constant  need  for  more  and  more 
skilled  men  and  higher  skill  in  the  individual  man,  its 
constant  substitution  of  machinery  for  mere  brawn 
which  tends  to  free  the  unskilled  worker  to  move  up 
into  the  skilled  class,  all  industry  and  therefore 
industrial  labor,  has  its  biggest,  surest  opportunity 
for  permanent  advancement  through  mutual  co- 
operation in  increasing  production  to  meet  our 
increasing  national  demands. 

This  is  of  course  the  exact  opposite  of  the  theory 
of  the  professional  labor  leader  as  to  labor's  proper 
method  of  advancement.  He  persistently  holds  that 
labor  is  a  class  apart  which  can  progress  only  by 
standing  together  as  a  class  and  fighting  for  special 
class  privileges  and  consideration.  He  blindly 
assumes  that  industrial  management  has  not  ad- 
vanced for  thirty  years  and  therefore  still  insists  that 
labor's  interest  is  inherently  and  entirely  antagonistic 
to  the  interest  of  the  rest  of  industry.     He  ignores 


Preface  xi 

the  constant  growth  of  the  country  and  the  constant 
demand  for  more  and  more  products  and  still  insists 
that  only  through  less  individual  skill  and  less  in- 
dividual production  can  the  increasing  number  of 
workers  continue  to  find  occupation.  His  entire 
reliance  therefore  for  labor's  advancement  lies  in 
powerful  labor  organizations  which  are  able  to  force, 
irrespective  of  skill  or  production  or  the  interests  of 
industry  or  the  rest  of  the  country,  labor's  advance- 
ment as  a  class  through  strikes  or  threats  of  strikes. 

During  and  after  the  war,  because  of  our  labor 
shortage  and  other  circumstances,  the  professional 
labor  leader  was  able  to  climb  into  the  saddle.  For 
nearly  two  years  he  dominated  the  labor  situation 
and  on  a  conspicuous  nation-wide  scale  carried  his 
theories  to  their  logical  conclusion. 

The  average  American  knows  in  a  general  way  that 
the  strikes  and  labor  unrest  after  the  war  were  big 
contributing  factors  in  the  high  cost  of  living.  Labor 
itself  knows  that  its  wages,  which  strikes  sent  up 
like  a  skyrocket  soon  began  to  come  down  like  the 
stick.  But  the  very  fact  that  this  demonstration  of 
the  professional  labor  leaders'  theories  has  so  con- 
spicuously raised  the  cost  of  living — the  fact  that  it 
has  brought  wage  advances  that  were  merely  tempo- 
rary— the  fact  that  it  has  led  to  making  the  labor 
question  a  conspicuous  national,  economic,  and  even 


xii  Preface 

political  issue — all  argue  the  importance  to  both 
labor  and  the  public  of  having  more  than  a  mere 
general  idea  of  what  this  demonstration  actually- 
showed. 

The  present  volume  is  in  no  sense  a  condemnation 
of  labor  organizations  or  unions  as  such.  The 
Brotherhood  of  Locomotive  Engineers  and  other 
groups  of  labor  which  have  sought  their  advance- 
ment along  similar  lines  have  always  maintained 
strong  organizations.  The  very  position  of  labor 
makes  the  right  kind  of  organization  generally  desir- 
able and  often  necessary.  Nor  is  any  attempt  made 
to  deny  to  labor  the  same  right  which  is  possessed 
by  every  other  competitive  interest  in  industry,  that 
of  competing,  and  when  necessary,  of  fighting  for  its 
legitimate  advantages  by  every  legitimate  means. 

What  is  attempted  is  to  analyze,  as  specifically  as 
possible,  the  costs  to  the  public  and  to  labor  itself  of 
the  strike  epidemic  which  followed  the  war  and  to 
show,  as  concretely  as  possible,  the  results,  to  labor, 
to  industry,  and  to  the  whole  country,  of  the  theories 
of  the  professional  labor  leader  for  the  advancement 
of  labor  as  they  have  logically  worked  themselves 
out  in  this  most  conspicuous  large  scale  demonstra- 
tion of  those  theories. 

M.  O. 

New  York  City,  March  i,  1921. 


SPECIAL  NOTE 

The  present  volume  has  been  largely  built  on  a 
series  of  articles  which  appeared  in  the  New  York 
Tribune  in  October,  1920,  and  in  Leslie's  Weekly.  Its 
main  facts  and  arguments  have  therefore  not  only 
already  received  a  wide  reading  and  criticism  from 
widely  divergent  points  of  view,  but  have  been  tested 
by  certain  conspicuous  subsequent  events. 

The  facts  brought  out,  for  instance,  and  the  de- 
ductions drawn  in  Chapter  III — "Strikes  and  the 
High  Cost  of  Rent " — were  sweepingly  condemned  by 
certain  obviously  interested  critics  as  grossly  exag- 
gerated and  as  constituting  a  vicious  and  unwar- 
ranted attack  on  labor  organizations  in  the  building 
trade.  The  subsequent  Lockwood  Investigation  of 
building  conditions  in  New  York,  however,  has 
shown  conclusively  that  this  chapter  constituted  a 
most  conservative  statement  of  conditions  as  they 
actually  existed. 

Certain  sympathizers  with  the  clothing  workers 
wrote  repeatedly,  sweepingly  denying  and  condemn- 
ing the  author's  statements  as  to  facts  and  motives 


xiv  Special  Note 

and  policies  of  the  Clothing  Union  officials.  Yet  a 
well-known  radical  union  leader  in  this  field  admitted 
freely  that  these  same  statements  and  deductions 
were  at  least  in  general  true  and  were  entirely 
warranted  from  the  point  of  view  of  modern  indus- 
trial organization;  but  added,  that  of  course  the 
very  object  of  such  strikes  and  the  very  purpose  of 
these  unions,  as  expressed  in  their  constitutions,  is  to 
break  down  modern  industrial  organization. 

A  well-known  radical  labor  leader  and  union  official 
of  the  so-called  "intellectual"  type,  while  he  agreed 
as  labor  leaders  in  general  will  not,  with  the  author's 
basic  conclusions  as  to  the  importance  of  production, 
not  only  in  the  after-the-war  strike  but  in  the  whole 
modern  labor  situation,  sweepingly  criticized  the 
whole  point  of  view  of  the  present  volume  as  to 
labor's  necessary  means  of  advancement  as  "fifty 
years  behind  all  modern  progressive  thinking  on  this 
subject. "  The  author  is  entirely  conscious  that  the 
basis  of  many  of  his  conclusions  goes  back  even 
further  than  this  in  human  thought  and  experience. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  it  is  his  fundamental  conviction 
that  one  of  the  chief  reasons  for  the  acuteness  of  the 
modern  labor  problem  is  the  very  fact  that  there 
has  been  too  much  straining  after  special  "modern" 
theories  in  regard  to  industrial  relations,  with  too 
much  straining  to  fit  our  industrial  conditions  into 


Special  Note  xv 

these  special  "modern"  theories,  and  too  little  con- 
sideration of  the  whole  problem  in  the  light  of  certain 
basic  principles  of  all  human  experience. 

It  is  also  his  conviction  that  what  the  labor  union 
movement,  begun  in  Europe  and  largely  developed  on 
eastern  European  theories,  needs  more  than  any- 
thing else  at  the  present  time  is  to  look  back  and 
check  its  theories  and  practices  with  the  basic  prin- 
ciples to  which  western,  and  particularly  American 
civilization  and  progress  owe  their  success. 

The  criticism  has  been  frequently  made  that  the 
author  has  not  given  sufficient  weight  to  the  influence 
of  inflation  and  other  obvious  contributing  factors  to 
high  prices  in  general,  and  at  most  has  merely  touched 
on  particular  contributing  factors  in  his  discussion 
of  certain  specific  high  prices.  Certain  economists 
for  instance  who  fully  agree  that  lessened  production 
was  the  basic  cause  for  after-the-war  increases  in 
prices  and  that  strikes  were  the  basic  reason  of  this 
lessened  production  have  yet  felt  that  such  constant 
emphasis  on  even  the  basic  factor  with  only  casual 
reference  to  other  factors  fails  to  give  a  true  picture 
of  the  whole  situation.  ■ 

1  In  his  nine-page  review  of  the  present  argument  as  it  appeared  in 
the  New  York  Tribune  (see  American  Federationist  for  November, 
1920),  the  only  specific  and  valid  criticism  which  Mr.  Samuel  Gompers 
makes  is  this  same  one  that  from  the  point  of  view  of  general  causes 
of  high  prices  the  argument  does  not  give  relative  consideration  to 
other  contributing  factors. 


xvi  Special  Note 

Two  special  chapters  were  prepared  for  the  original 
New  York  Tribune  series  which  did  deal  in  much 
greater  detail  with  inflation,  profiteering,  over- 
speculation,  over-spending,  competition  for  labor 
and  similar  contributing  factors  to  high  prices.  But 
it  was  felt  by  others  at  that  time,  and  the  author  still 
feels,  that  while  such  chapters  would  of  course  be 
necessary  to  any  broad  general  discussion  of  high 
prices  themselves,  that  they  are  not  necessary  and 
would  merely  interfere  with  and  divert  the  develop- 
ment of  the  present  argument  which  is  not  in  regard 
to  the  general  causes  of  high  prices  but  is  specifically 
devoted  to  pointing  out  and  emphasizing  that  and 
why  non-production  due  to  strikes  was  the  basic  cause 
of  high  prices  after  the  war. 

Many  critics  have  appeared  who  have  denounced 
the  author's  statements  as  to  motives  of  certain  labor 
leaders  and  labor  policies  by  quoting  public  utter- 
ances of  these  same  labor  leaders  to  the  contrary. 
No  one  who  is  familiar  with  Mr.  William  Z.  Foster's 
book,  The  Great  Strike,  dealing  with  his  own  attempts 
to  organize  the  steel  industry,  in  which  he  constantly 
speaks  of  his  "flank  attacks, "  his  "camouflage,  "  his 
1 '  feints  to  cover  secret  attacks, ' '  and  otherwise  frankly 
glorifies  the  most  unscrupulous  forms  of  deception — 
no  one  who  is  familiar  with  the  influence  of  radicalism 
in  labor  politics  and  its  frankly  admitted  Soviet 


Special  Note  xvii 

policy  of  the  ends  justifying  any  means,  can  fail  to 
realize  that  in  many  cases  it  is  impossible  to  get  at 
the  truth  without  going  back  of  public  statements 
and  obvious  maneuverings  of  the  labor  leader  and 
judging  facts  and  motives  and  policies  on  the  basis  of 
his  acts. 

In  thus  educing  motives  and  policies  on  the  basis 
of  acts,  the  author  has  used  every  effort  to  be  con- 
servative. As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  is  little  question 
that  in  many  cases,  if  all  the  facts  were  known,  the 
actual  conditions  would  prove,  just  as  they  did  in 
the  building  trade,  to  be  far  more  extreme  than  the 
author's  statement  of  them. 

The  present  volume  as  a  whole,  and  particularly 
those  sections  devoted  to  interpretation  and  deduc- 
tion, as  distinct  from  mere  statement  of  fact,  have 
been  discussed  in  detail  with  many  men  of  many 
points  of  view — employers,  economists,  financial  and 
legal  experts,  labor  leaders,  radicals,  and  many 
workers,  both  union  and  non-union. 

This  assistance,  in  some  cases  involving  a  very  con- 
siderable amount  of  time,  constitutes  a  contribution 
of  whose  value  the  author  wishes  to  express  full 
acknowledgment  and  appreciation. 

M.  O. 

New  York  City,  March  i,  1021. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I. — Strikes  and  the  High  Cost  of  Food        3 

II. — Strikes    and     the     High     Cost    of 

Clothing 16 

III. — Strikes  and  the  High  Cost  of  Rent      26 

IV. — The  High  Cost  of  Strikes  to  Labor      41 

V. — Striking  at  the   Nerve   Centers  of 

Industry         .....       50 

VI. — Strikes   and    Inefficient    Distribu- 
tion of  Labor        ....       62 

VII. — Strikes  and  the  High  Cost  of  Living      73 

VIII. — What  are   Strikes   Gaining  to  Off- 
set these  Losses  ...       85 

IX. — Outlaw    Strikes — Mania     Strikes — 

Graft  Strikes  93 

X. — Strikes      for      Higher      Pay      and 

Shorter  Hours      .         .         .         .102 

XI. — The  High  Cost  of  Futile  Strikes    .     115 

XII. — The  High  Cost  of  Strike  "Victories"     128 


xx  Contents 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XIII. — Strikes  as  Mere  Incidents  in  Fights 

for  Personal  Power     .         .         .144 

XIV. — Striking  for  Monopoly  Domination 
by  a  Class  of  Everybody's  Neces- 
saries of  Life       .         .         .         .157 

XV. — Strikes  and  Radicalism    .         .         .177 

XVI. — Striking  at  the  Roots  of  Americanism     193 

XVII. — Summary  of  Facts     ....     205 

XVIII. — What  are  we  Going  to  Do  about  it?    216 

XIX. — Make  Labor  Obey  the  Law     .         .     237 

XX. — At  the  Bar  of  Public  Opinion         .     256 


The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 


The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

CHAPTER  I 

STRIKES  AND  THE  HIGH   COST  OF  FOOD 

How  much  did  you  pay  for  potatoes  in  April,  1920? 
The  price  of  potatoes  throughout  the  whole  North- 
eastern section  of  the  country  was  raised  at  that  time 
over  four  dollars  more  per  barrel — and  if  you  live  in 
this  section,  you  paid  over  four  dollars  more  per 
barrel — because  of  one  specific  strike. 

From  February  till  June,  1920,  if  you  live  in  this 
section,  you  paid  about  twice  as  much  as  you  need 
have  paid — twice  as  much  as  you  would  otherwise 
have  paid — for  all  your  fresh  vegetables,  also  entirely 
on  account  of  a  strike. 

Many  people  throughout  the  country  during  and 
after  the  war  sought  relief  from  the  high  price  of 
meat  by  eating  fish — but  the  price  of  tuna  went  up 
fifty  per  cent,  in  191 9  and  thirty-five  per  cent,  more 
in  1920  because  of  two  strikes. 

Thousands  of  people  of  New  York  have  had  to  pay 

3 


4  The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

three  cents  more  for  every  can  of  tomatoes  and  other 
canned  goods  because  of  another  strike. 

Strikes  have  been  one  of  the  biggest  factors  in  the 
high  cost  of  sugar.  In  one  instance  one  strike  alone 
sent  the  price  of  sugar  up  eight  cents  a  pound,  and  it 
is  probable  that  altogether  you  paid  double  that 
extra  on  every  pound  of  sugar  you  bought  in  Febru- 
ary to  May,  1920,  because  of  strikes. 

And  this  is  just  on  the  sugar  you,  yourself  used. 
The  cost  of  the  sugar  the  preservers  and  canners  used 
made  you  pay  a  thirty-five  per  cent,  advance,  even 
over  the  big  raise  of  1919  for  1920  preserves. 

We  all  paid  more  for  peaches  and  other  fruits  in 
the  summer  of  1920  than  ever  before — the  primary 
cause  goes  back  to  a  strike.  Easterners  for  months 
during  the  same  summer  had  to  pay  more  for  meat, 
directly  due  to  strikes.  And  in  the  same  way  it  can 
be  shown  specifically  that  labor  as  well  as  the  rest  of 
us — that  overworked  women  and  underfed  children 
as  well  as  profiteers — had  during  the  whole  first  two 
years  after  the  war  to  pay  exorbitant  and  otherwise 
wholly  unnecessary  high  prices  for  a  hundred  and  one 
other  products,  that  all  of  us  had  to  have  or  suffer 
without,  directly  and  specifically  because  of  some 
strike  or  series  of  strikes. 

One  of  the  most  important  developments  in  the 
last  decade — one  that  has  contributed  very  much 


Strikes  and  High  Cost  of  Food       5 

not  only  to  keeping  the  cost  of  living  down  but  in 
raising  the  standards  of  living  in  all  the  Northern 
section  of  our  country — has  been  the  rise  of  the  fruit 
and  vegetable  growing  industry  in  the  Southern 
States.  Formerly  people  in  the  Northern  sections 
of  the  country  were  limited  during  a  large  part  of  the 
winter  months  to  the  few  fruits  and  vegetables  that 
could  be  carried  over  in  cellars  from  the  previous 
summer,  and  which  not  only  furnished  the  meagerest 
diet  of  this  kind,  but  which,  in  proportion  as  they 
were  consumed  or  spoiled,  rose  higher  and  higher  in 
price.  The  development  of  fruit  and  vegetable 
growing  in  the  South  has  meant  that  from  January 
on  Northern  markets  have  been  supplied  with  an 
ever-increasing  variety  of  all  kinds  of  palatable  and 
healthful  products,  which  each  year  tended  to  be- 
come cheaper  in  proportion  as  the  supply  grew,  till 
even  the  poorest  among  our  population  have  been 
able  to  reform  the  family  diet  on  a  more  healthful 
and  palatable  basis. 

The  main  arteries  which  supply  this  important 
food  element  to  our  millions  of  families  in  the  North 
East  are  the  Clyde,  Mallory,  and  Old  Dominion 
Steamship  lines.  Early  in  1920  the  dock  workers  of 
each  of  these  lines  struck.  Following  the  usual  prac- 
tice of  modern  strikers  of  striking  just  when  they 
could  influence  their  employers  most  by  pinching 


6  The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

the  public  hardest,  and  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  they 
had  a  wage  agreement  with  six  months  still  to  run, 
the  dock  workers  on  each  line  planned  this  strike  for 
just  the  time  when  the  Southern  vegetables  for  the 
Northern  market  were  beginning  to  arrive  on  the 
dock  from  their  particular  section. 

These  dock  laborers,  who  in  the  South  were  chiefly 
negroes,  and  in  the  North  almost  entirely  foreigners, 
had  been  receiving  $35  a  week  for  nine  hours  a  day. 
They  struck  for  $44  a  week,  eight  hours  a  day,  four 
hours  on  Saturday,  and  $2  an  hour  for  all  overtime. 
These  three  steamship  lines  were  on  record  with  the 
Interstate  Commerce  Commission  as  having  been 
run  at  a  net  loss  of  over  $6,000,000  in  1919,  so  that 
any  increase  in  wages  had  to  depend  on  an  allowance 
by  the  commission  of  an  increase  in  freight  rates. 
It  is  not  proposed  to  go  into  the  ethical  phases  or  the 
justice  of  such  a  strike  here,  but  this  is  sufficient  to 
indicate  that  at  least  this  strike  was  not  forced  on 
labor  by  unbearable  wages  or  conditions. 

By  April  this  strike  had  so  diminished  New  York's 
supply  of  potatoes  that  a  special  attempt  was  made 
to  get  a  cargo  of  potatoes  through.  The  cargo  was 
brought  safely  to  the  Spring  Street  dock — to  within 
a  few  hundred  yards  of  the  commission  warehouses, 
and  to  within  a  mile  of  New  York's  biggest  public 
markets.     But  the  less  than  three  hundred  strikers 


Strikes  and  High  Cost  of  Food       7 

not  only  refused  to  handle  these  potatoes  themselves 
but  in  spite  of  the  interest  and  the  need  of  the  whole 
population  of  New  York  succeeded  through  intimida- 
tion and  other  methods  familiar  to  the  public  in 
preventing  their  being  removed  these  few  hundred 
yards  by  any  other  means. 

Finally  a  lighter  was  secured  and  the  potatoes 
moved  aboard  it  without  the  knowledge  of  the 
strikers.  The  lighter  was  then  towed  down  the  river 
and  up  Newark  Bay  to  Harrison,  N.J.  The  potatoes 
were  here  taken  from  the  lighter  to  the  Erie  Railroad 
by  truck  and  sent  in  to  New  York  as  Jersey  freight. 
These  extra  and  special  operations  cost  a  little  over 
four  dollars  a  barrel,  but  the  shortage  of  potatoes  at 
the  time  was  so  acute  that  the  New  York  market 
eagerly  absorbed  them  even  at  this  tremendously 
higher  cost. 

As  soon  as  the  strikers  from  these  boat  lines 
started  and  the  normal  arteries  for  supplying  one  of 
New  York's  chief  food  necessities  were  closed  it  was 
necessary  of  course  to  fall  back  on  the  railroads  from 
the  South.  But  these,  because  of  strikes  of  their  own, 
lack  of  equipment,  and  other  disorganization  which 
had  lasted  over  from  the  war,  were  having  the  ut- 
most difficulty  in  taking  care  of  their  own  traffic, 
including  the  Southern  vegetable  crop  for  the  inland 
cities  of  the  North,  and  were  in  no  way  prepared 


8  The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

to  bear  this  immense  and  unexpected  volume  of 
extra  traffic. 

Moreover  it  is  absolutely  necessary  for  fruit  and 
vegetables  to  be  handled  with  the  utmost  dispatch, 
and  this  these  railroads  were  entirely  unable  to  do. 
It  was  necessary,  therefore,  to  load  these  fruit  and 
vegetables  into  any  kind  of  freight  cars  that  could  be 
secured — generally  without  any  chance  for  icing — and 
then  to  pay  not  ordinary  freight,  but  special  express 
rates,  in  order  to  rush  them  to  market.  Yet  even 
with  all  these  precautions,  literally  hundreds  of  cars 
of  fruits  and  vegetables  reached  the  North  in  such  a 
spoiled  condition  that  they  had  to  be  dumped  im- 
mediately into  the  city  garbage  dumps. 

Due  thus  directly  and  entirely  to  this  strike  of  a 
few  hundred  dock  laborers  and  to  no  other  cause, 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  families  throughout  the 
Northern  section  of  the  country  had  to  pay,  according 
to  all  competent  estimates,  often  at  least  one  hundred 
per  cent,  more  for  all  the  fruit  and  vegetables  they 
bought  during  the  whole  spring  of  1920. 

Moreover,  the  indirect  results — in  the  shortage  and 
so  in  the  higher  prices  of  all  the  other  commodities 
which  the  Southern  railroads  could  not  handle  be- 
cause they  handled  this  normal  boat  business — all  the 
other  indirect  results  which  always  follow  any  such 
general  upsetting  of  the  normal  operation  of  industry, 


Strikes  and  High  Cost  of  Food       9 

though  they  cannot  be  estimated,  unquestionably 
ran  up  the  real  cost  of  this  strike  to  the  public  far 
higher  even  than  this. 

"Eat  more  fish "  was  one  of  the  slogans  of  the  war, 
and  numerous  government  bulletins  emphasized  to 
the  whole  country  the  specially  healthful  and  palat- 
able qualities  of  tuna  fish  until  it  has  become,  even  in 
these  few  years,  almost  a  staple  product  of  national 
consumption. 

Tuna  fish  are  caught  and  canned  or  otherwise 
preserved  chiefly  along  the  coast  of  California,  where 
an  important  new  industry  has  been  started  by  their 
increased  general  popularity.  The  tuna  fish  comes 
to  the  California  coast  in  great  schools  during  a 
certain  limited  season  of  each  year,  the  fishers  and 
canneries  being  occupied  the  rest  of  the  year  in  catch- 
ing and  preparing  sardines  and  other  fish. 

Now  there  are  few  sections  in  the  country  in  which 
the  general  cost  of  living,  according  to  the  best  official 
figures,  had  gone  up  even  by  the  summer  of  1920  when 
prices  reached  their  peak,  more  than  116  per  cent, 
over  19 1 4.  In  California  it  had  gone  up  very  much 
less  than  this.  Yet  in  1919,  just  as  the  tuna  fish  began 
to  run,  the  California  fishermen  struck  for  a  five 
hundred  per  cent,  raise  in  wages  and  stayed  on  strike 
till  after  the  schools  of  tuna  fish  had  left.  As  a  result 
there  was  practically  no  tuna  fish  packed  that  year 


io   -      The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

and  the  demand  throughout  the  country  put  the  price 
up  about  fifty  per  cent.  The  price  of  sardines  and 
other  fish  handled  in  the  same  industry  was  of  course 
also  more  or  less  seriously  affected. 

Again  in  1920  just  as  the  tuna  fish  began  to  run 
the  fishermen  struck.  Again  also  for  a  500  per  cent, 
increase  in  wages,  but  they  finally  compromised  on  a 
350  per  cent,  increase.  This  necessitated  a  still 
further  advance  of  35  per  cent,  in  the  price  of  tuna 
fish.  In  other  words,  all  the  rest  of  us  whose  incomes 
did  not  even  keep  pace  with  the  high  cost  of  living 
had  to  pay  85  per  cent,  more  for  our  tuna  fish  simply 
and  solely  because  certain  California  fishermen  de- 
cided to  use  the  weapon  of  the  strike  to  increase 
their  own  incomes  over  four  times  their  increased 
cost  of  living. 

Authorities  do  not  agree  as  to  just  which  was  the 
most  important  and  which  was  only  the  second  most 
important  contributing  factor  to  the  high  cost  of 
sugar.  There  are  those  who  say  that  the  honor  of 
being  the  primary  cause  goes  to  an  arbitrary  war 
government  which  handled  the  sugar  situation  with 
far  more  regard  to  the  feelings  of  certain  Southern 
politicians  than  with  regard  to  the  pocketbooks  of  the 
rest  of  the  nation.  Others  maintain  that  the  trouble 
started  when  a  fully  developed,  high-powered  modern 
strike  bacillus,   escaping  from  warring  civilization, 


Strikes  and  High  Cost  of  Food     1 1 

strayed  in  some  unaccountable  way  into  the  jungles 
of  Cuba. 

For  years  the  dark-skinned  gentleman,  who  since 
the  end  of  revolutionary  days  have  used  their  wide- 
famed  machetes  in  the  peaceful  occupation  of  cutting 
sugar  cane,  had  been  paid  at  the  rate  of  fifty  cents  per 
one  hundred  arrobas,  of  about  twenty-five  pounds 
each,  for  this  work.  Since,  however,  the  modern 
strike  bacillus  found  its  way  into  Cuba,  he  receives 
$i  .50  for  the  same  work.  As  a  result  the  first  cost  in 
the  production  of  sugar  went  up  three  hundred  per 
cent. 

But  in  the  center  of  Cuba  everything  grows  wild, 
the  social  demands  are  limited,  and  the  local  equiva- 
lent for  our  high  cost  of  living  could  be  very  comfort- 
ably maintained  with  only  an  ordinary  amount  of 
work  at  fifty  cents  per  one  hundred  arrobas.  At 
$1.50  a  hundred  arrobas  it  could  of  course  be  main- 
tained with  only  one  third  as  much  work.  And  who 
can  blame  this  poor  backward  Cuban  if  he  was  im- 
mediately seduced  by  a  very  popular  modern  labor 
doctrine  and  promptly  refused  to  work  more  than  one 
third  of  the  time?  Or  who  can  blame  him  if  he  re- 
fused to  worry  because  his  loafing  on  the  job  still 
further  increased  the  price  of  sugar  to  some  unknown 
Northern  gringo? 

Moreover,  the  modern  strike  bacillus,  as  we  know 


12  The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

too  well,  also  refuses  to  stay  put.  He  soon  got  to 
work  among  the  railroad  operatives  who  transport 
the  sugar  to  the  port ;  among  the  dockmen  who  load 
the  sugar ;  he  followed  on  up  into  the  sugar  refineries 
of  America. 

During  January,  1920,  there  were  seven  separate 
and  distinct  strikes  that  handicapped  production  or 
distribution  and  so  increased  the  price  of  sugar.  Four 
of  these  strikes  continued  into  February  and  four 
new  ones  were  begun.  Four  of  these  extended  over 
into  March,  and  twelve  new  strikes  were  begun  in 
March.  Six  of  these  continued  over  into  April  and 
five  new  ones  began  in  April,  all  of  which,  both  old 
and  new,  continued  into  May.  Meanwhile  the  price 
of  refined  sugar  advanced  from  13^  cents  a  pound 
the  first  of  March  to  22^  cents  a  pound  by  the  end 
of  May. 

Moreover,  in  addition  to  these  general  facts  as  to 
the  relation  between  strikes  and  the  increased  cost  of 
sugar  there  are  any  number  of  isolated  instances 
where  strikes  have  resulted  directly  in  sending  the 
price  of  sugar  still  higher.  For  instance,  during  the 
outlaw  railroad  strike  around  Pittsburgh,  sugar  was 
twenty-two  cents  a  pound  in  all  the  surrounding 
territory,  but  because  no  new  supply  could  be  moved 
into  Pittsburgh  sugar  went  up  and  stayed  up  to  thirty 
cents  a  pound  as  long  as  this  strike  lasted. 


Strikes  and  High  Cost  of  Food     13 

There  was  no  shortage  of  sugar  in  1920.  More 
sugar  was  produced  and  Americans  consumed  more 
sugar  than  at  any  other  time  in  our  history.  Our  per 
capita  consumption,  for  instance,  was  79  pounds  in 
191 3  and  78  pounds  in  1914.  It  went  down  to  73 
pounds  during  the  war  in  19 18.  On  the  other  hand, 
it  was  85  pounds  per  capita  in  191 9,  and  was  running 
at  the  rate  of  87  pounds  per  capita  during  this  period 
of  1920. 

Moreover,  not  only  was  there  no  shortage  of  sugar, 
but  it  can  be  very  definitely  said  that  the  producers  of 
sugar  were  not  profiteering.  For  every  detail  of  their 
costs  and  selling  prices  was  on  file  in  the  United 
States  Department  of  Justice.  One  practical  author- 
ity on  sugar  conditions  who  would  not  allow  himself 
to  be  quoted  said  in  July  that  he  "estimated"  that 
directly  and  indirectly  "strikes"  were  costing  the 
American  people  over  fifteen  cents  on  every  pound  of 
sugar  they  were  then  buying.  Certainly  the  definite 
facts  and  figures  seem  to  indicate  that  this  estimate 
was  reasonable. 

These  specific  facts  as  to  the  effect  which  strikes 
and  strikes  alone  had  in  increasing,  and  often  in- 
creasing exorbitantly,  the  price  of  every  kind  of  food 
product  can  be  multiplied  again  and  again.  The 
strike  itself  may  often  have  been  far  away  and  at  an 
entirely  different  time  from  the  increase  of  price,  yet 


14  The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

be  directly  responsible  for  it.  The  strike  may  often 
have  been  for  only  a  few  days'  duration,  yet  directly 
increased  the  price  of  a  whole  season's  output. 

Michigan  frequently  has  a  grasshopper  pest  in 
July,  against  which  farmers  protect  their  crop  by  a 
special  spray.  In  1920  railroad  strikes  around 
Chicago  prevented  this  spraying  material  from  being 
delivered  and  Michigan  farmers  in  the  Lansing  dis- 
trict alone  lost  their  root  crop  to  the  extent  of 
one  million  dollars.  Of  course  the  consumer  paid  for 
this  loss  in  the  higher  prices  of  beets  and  carrots 
and  turnips. 

The  same  railroad  strike  at  the  big  distributing 
centers  held  up  material  with  which  fruit  growers  all 
through  the  Middle  West  spray  their  trees  in  May 
and  June.  Three  months  later  the  fruit  crops  in  these 
sections  were  so  limited  and  poor  that  all  of  us  had  to 
pay  January  prices  for  fruit  right  through  August 
and  September. 

And  parallel  examples  of  how  strikes  were  the 
direct  and  sole  cause  of  definite  and  big  increases  in 
the  prices  of  meat  and  butter  and  rice  and  eggs  and 
milk  and  practically  every  other  necessity  of  life 
could  be  cited  almost  indefinitely. 

Moreover,  it  must  be  clearly  understood  that  all 
these  represent  only  the  direct  effect  of  such  strikes, 
and  only  of  strikes  which  have  had  a  direct  and 


Strikes  and  High  Cost  of  Food     15 

traceable  effect  on  prices.  The  indirect  effects  have 
in  many  cases  undoubtedly  been  even  greater. 

Again,  it  must  be  remembered  that  labor  itself  is 
the  biggest  buyer  of  food  products  in  the  country. 

The  question  cannot  help  but  occur:  Does  labor 
itself,  does  the  average  American  worker,  really  know 
or  realize  how  much  it  cost,  not  only  the  country  as 
a  whole,  but  how  much  it  cost  him,  because  some 
few  or  few  hundred  fellow  workmen,  somewhere  in 
the  country,  casually  decided  to  go  on  a  strike? 


CHAPTER  II 

STRIKES  AND  THE  HIGH   COST  OF  CLOTHING 

When  you  had  to  pay  $55,  $65  or  $75  for  a  suit  of 
clothes  during  19 19  and  1920,  about  $20  to  $30  of  that 
price  was  due  to  strikes. 

Men's  shirts  went  up  out  of  all  proportion  to  their 
increased  cost  of  production  and  to  the  increased 
cost  of  other  articles.  The  extra  difference  was 
because  of  strikes. 

Laboring  men  in  1920  had  to  pay  four  times  as 
much  for  their  overalls  as  in  191 3,  and  about  twice  as 
much  as  in  1919.  The  chief  reason  was  strikes  by 
other  laboring  men. 

Certain  cotton  cloth  went  up  nine  cents  a  yard  on 
account  of  one  strike. 

Several  hundreds  of  millions  of  yards  of  gray  cloth 
went  up  five  cents  a  yard  entirely  because  of  strikes. 

Scores  of  millions  of  yards  of  many  kinds  of  the 
dress  cloth  made  in  the  Providence  district  went  up 
one  hundred  per  cent,  entirely  because  of  strikes. 

Moreover  these  increases  of  nine  cents  a  yard  and 
five  cents  a  yard  and  one  hundred  per  cent,  apply 

16 


Strikes  and  High  Cost  of  Clothing  17 

merely  to  increased  costs  caused  by  strikes  that 
affect  factory  production.  They  apply  only  to 
factory  prices.  Railroad  strikes,  dock  strikes,  team- 
sters' strikes,  and  many  other  strikes  have  further  so 
handicapped  or  held  up  the  distribution  and  sale  of 
those  goods  that  you,  the  ultimate  consumer,  often 
had  to  pay  many  times  this  much  extra. 

When  the  war  ended,  America  began  the  task  of 
demobilizing  four  million  men,  most  of  whom  had 
been  out  of  civilian  life  from  one  to  two  years.  All 
the  men  and  women  who  had  anything  to  do  with  the 
discharged  soldier,  from  demobilization  officers  to 
Salvation  Army  doughnut  girls,  will  tell  you  that  the 
discharged  soldier  in  general — and  four  million  families 
will  tell  you  that  their  discharged  soldier  in  particular 
— had  just  two  ideas  when  he  got  out  of  the  army :  First, 
to  get  some  good  home  cooking  again,  and,  second,  to 
get  back  into  a  nice  new  suit  of  civilian  clothes. 

During  1919  America  needed,  therefore,  at  least 
four  million  suits  of  clothes  more  than  it  needed  the 
year  before.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  got  just  four 
million J  suits  less  than  the  year  before,  or  some  eight 
million  suits  less  than  it  needed,  because  of  a  series  of 

1  This  figure,  furnished  by  officers  of  the  Clothing  Manufacturers' 
Association,  is  confirmed  by  multiplying  the  7,600,000  working  days 
lost  through  strikes  in  the  clothing  industry  in  1919  (National  In- 
dustrial Conference  Board  figures)  by  the  average  production  per 
day  per  worker. 


18         The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

strikes  that  tied  up  practically  the  whole  clothing 
industry  the  spring  of  that  year. 

The  facts  about  labor  conditions  in  the  clothing 
industry  have  rather  frequently  come  to  public  atten- 
tion in  the  past.  It  is  generally  known  that  while 
designers  and  cutters  and  such  skilled  workmen  re- 
ceive exceptionally  high  wages,  the  great  bulk  of  the 
work  used  to  be  done  under  what  is  popularly  known 
as  sweatshop  conditions  by  a  very  low  grade  of  labor 
— largely  recently  arrived  or  unassimilated  foreigners, 
both  men  and  women,  most  of  whom  have  been  too 
physically  or  technically  inefficient  to  do  other  kinds 
of  better  grade  work. 

Unquestionably  labor  conditions  in  the  clothing 
field  had  been  in  crying  need  of  readjustment  for 
many  years  before  the  war.  But  the  great  sudden 
war  demand  for  uniforms  and  other  articles  of  cloth- 
ing, with  its  corresponding  demand  for  labor,  had 
brought  such  a  large  measure  of  readjustment  in  this 
field  that  before  the  end  of  the  war,  the  chief  evils  of 
the  sweatshop  system  had  disappeared  and  the  most 
ordinary  clothing  worker  was  receiving  from  twenty- 
five  dollars  to  thirty-five  dollars  a  week. 

During  the  war,  but  when  its  end  was  already  in 
sight  so  that  the  demand  for  a  greatly  increased  pro- 
duction to  meet  the  needs  of  the  millions  of  soldiers 
about  to  return  to  civil  life  was  perfectly  obvious,  the 


Strikes  and  High  Cost  of  Clothing  19 

clothing  workers  struck  for  a  forty-four  hour  week  and 
other  production  concessions — which  would  and  did 
decrease  production  at  least  thirty-five  per  cent.,  and 
in  addition  for  a  wage  increase  which  doubled  even 
their  high  war  pay. 

Instead,  therefore,  of  the  production  of  the  four 
million  additional  suits  of  clothes  which  were  needed, 
this  strike  cut  the  production  for  the  year  19 19 
almost  four  million  suits  of  clothes  below  the  produc- 
tion of  the  year  before,  or  nearly  eight  million  suits 
below  what  we  needed  and  knew  in  advance  that  we 
would  need.  And  it  was  this  tremendous  shortage — 
inexcusable  because  entirely  foreseen  by  both  manu- 
facturers and  labor  and  deliberately  precipitated  by 
labor — which  sent  the  price  of  an  ordinary  suit  of 
clothes  up  to  $55,  $65,  and  $75  during  1919  and  the 
early  part  of  1920. 

But  this  shortage  and  consequent  immense  ad- 
vance in  price  is  only  the  first  half  of  the  result.  The 
shortage  became  so  acute  and  the  prices  went  so 
high  that  the  clothing  manufacturers  yielded  to  the 
demands  of  the  strikers.  The  result  was  that  with 
this  new  wage  scale  plus  the  new  lower  scale  of  pro- 
duction, due  to  the  forty -four  hour  week,  this  class 
of  labor  which  had  never  been  able  to  earn  more  than 
$12  to  $20  a  week  under  normal  labor  competition, 
even  for  the  old  rate  of  production,  now  received 


20  The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

$50  to  $85  a  week  for  the  new  scale  of  production, 
which  was  equivalent  to  about  $100  a  week  per 
worker  for  the  old  rate  of  production. 

On  the  basis  of  this  immense  increase  in  costs,  the 
manufacturers  then  started  in  to  try  to  catch  up 
with  the  demand.  But  prices  had  already  been 
forced  so  high  that  by  the  spring  of  1920  the  public 
began  to  refuse  to  pay  them — the  manufacturers  and 
retailers  had  more  and  more  to  dispose  of  immense 
stocks  at  less  than  cost  and  as  a  result  by  July,  at 
what  was  ordinarily  the  height  of  the  producing 
season,  over  fifty  per  cent,  of  all  labor  in  the  industry 
was  out  of  employment. 

This  Ponzi  get-rich-quick  idea  which  was  the  basis 
of  the  clothing  strike  in  the  spring  of  1919  not  only 
cost  the  general  public,  including  millions  of  the 
labor  public,  from  ten  to  thirty  dollars  apiece  on 
every  suit  they  had  to  buy,  but  for  months  it  cost 
over  half  the  clothing  workers  of  the  country  them- 
selves the  thirty-five  dollars  a  week — double  what 
they  had  ever  been  able  to  earn  before,  or  perhaps 
even  forty  dollars  or  forty-five  dollars  a  week — which 
they  might  have  continued  to  earn  steadily  and 
indefinitely. 

Moreover  the  end  is  not  yet.  The  scale  of  living 
of  American  labor  ought  to  go  steadily  up.  Wages 
ought  to  go  steadily  up.    Labor  believes  this,  and  is 


Strikes  and  High  Cost  of  Clothing  21 

right  in  believing  it.  But  wages  cannot  be  doubled 
one  year  and  doubled  again  to  four  times  the  original 
wages  the  next  year.  The  public,  including  the  labor 
public,  cannot  pay  four  times  as  much,  including  the 
thirty-five  per  cent,  reduction  in  efficiency — actually 
six  times  as  much — to  any  special  group  of  labor  for 
making  any  absolute  and  universal  necessity.  That 
the  public,  including  the  rest  of  labor,  will  not  pay 
such  rates  was  amply  demonstrated  the  last  six 
months  of  1920  not  only  in  this  but  in  other  fields. 
And  with  their  get-rich-quick  bubble  hopelessly 
burst  there  has  already  been  much  bitterness  and 
recrimination,  and  under  the  radical  leadership  which 
now  dominates  the  clothing  unions  there  are  sure  to 
be  further  strikes,  which  can  only  mean  still  further 
needless  cost  to  both  the  workers  and  the  public. 

Change  the  word  "suits"  to  "shirts"  and  the 
figures  in  proportion,  and  the  story  of  what  has 
happened  in  the  suit  industry  will  tell  almost  word  for 
word  what  has  happened  in  the  shirt  industry  also. 

There  were  the  same  four  million  soldiers,  and  as  a 
man  probably  buys  about  four  shirts  to  one  suit  of 
clothes,  this  means  that  about  16,000,000  more  shirts 
were  needed  to  supply  the  American  market  than 
were  needed  that  last  year  of  the  war.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  a  series  of  strikes  in  the  shirt  and  allied  industries 
actually  cut  the  production  of  shirts,  according  to 


22  The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

Babson's  figures,  by  15,886,500  below  that  of  the 
year  before,  which  meant  a  total  of  about  32,000,000 
shirts  fewer  than  America  needed.  Of  course,  under 
such  circumstances  the  price  of  shirts  went  fifty  or 
one  hundred  per  cent,  higher  than  the  increased  cost 
of  labor  or  material  or  any  other  legitimate  factor 
would  have  sent  it.  And  this  is  the  amount  that 
strikes  cost  you  on  every  shirt  you  bought. 

Again  change  the  word  "suits"  or  "shirts"  to 
"overalls"  and  make  the  figures  a  little  different 
and  you  have  the  story  of  the  extremely  high  price 
to  which  overalls  went. 

In  this  case  the  lessened  production,  due  to  strikes, 
was,  according  to  Babson's  figures,  19,133,800  pairs, 
and  the  price  of  ordinary  overalls  which  had  been 
87^  cents  wholesale  in  1913,  and  $1.87^  in  1919, 
went  to  $3.i2>£  a  pair  by  May,  1920. 

There  is  a  cotton  goods  house  on  lower  Broadway 
whose  mills,  in  the  Fall  River  district,  were  closed  for 
eighteen  weeks  during  the  spring  of  1920  by  a  strike. 
Of  course,  the  workers  lost  millions  of  dollars  in  wages. 
The  firm  itself  lost  other  millions  of  dollars  in  various 
ways.  The  officers  of  the  firm  rate  as  their  biggest 
loss  the  fact  that  their  big  body  of  skilled  workmen, 
which  they  had  carefully  built  up  over  a  long  period 
of  years,  and  to  whom  they  recognize  that  they  owe  a 
large  part  of  the  success  of  their  business,  became  so 


Strikes  and  High  Cost  of  Clothing  23 

inoculated  with  the  strike  mania  that  the  continua- 
tion of  their  employment  became  impossible.  But 
there  is  one  loss  from  this  strike  which  has  a  direct 
bearing  on  the  public. 

This  company  has  a  large  corps  of  salesmen  which 
they  felt  it  necessary  to  keep  together  as  an  organiza- 
tion. Each  of  these  salesmen  has  a  large  body  of 
customers  who  regularly  depended  on  this  company 
to  supply  them  with  certain  classes  of  cotton  goods. 
To  keep  their  salesmen  working,  their  customers 
supplied,  and  in  general  to  suffer  as  little  loss  as 
possible,  the  company  went  into  the  open  market  to 
buy  the  kind  of  goods  they  usually  produce.  Because 
of  shortage  they  had  to  pay  just  two  million  dollars 
more  for  these  goods  than  it  would  have  cost  to 
produce  them,  which  two  million  dollars  was,  of  course, 
ultimately  passed  on  to  the  public. 

This  case  is  in  a  general  way  typical  of  the  round- 
about and  expensive  ways  that  many  concerns  are 
forced  by  strikes  to  resort  to  in  order  to  supply  the 
public  with  the  goods  it  wants.  It  is  just  one  way 
strikes  pile  up  the  high  cost  of  living  for  you.  There 
are  many  other  ways.  And  there  were  four  thousand 
strikes  last  year. 

The  strike  on  the  Clyde,  Mallory,  and  Old  Domin- 
ion lines  which  made  people  in  New  York  and  the 
New  England  States  pay  one  hundred  per  cent,  more 


34  The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

for  all  their  fruit  and  vegetables  also  stopped,  or 
seriously  interfered  with,  the  transportation  of  the 
unbleached  or  gray  goods  from  Southern  cotton  mills. 

The  M.  C.  D.  Borden  Company  normally  handles 
four  million  yards  of  such  goods  a  week.  During  a 
large  part  of  the  time  this  boat  strike  lasted,  and 
entirely  due  to  the  strike,  the  shortage  in  these  goods 
and  the  extra  expense  of  getting  what  goods  they  did 
obtain  added  about  five  cents  a  yard  to  the  factory 
cost.  And  there  are  one  hundred  other  similar  firms 
handling  the  same  kind  of  goods. 

In  making  cotton  goods,  one  mill  will  spin  the 
thread,  another  will  weave  it  into  cloth,  another  will 
print  it,  etc.  Such  different  mills  are  sometimes 
under  the  control  of  one  management  and  sometimes 
separately  controlled.  But  in  either  case  a  strike  in 
one  mill  seriously  interferes  with  or  stops  production 
of  the  others.  If  they  are  not  to  stop  producing,  these 
other  mills  must  go  out  in  the  open  market  and  com- 
pete against  each  other  for  the  limited  supply  of  the 
particular  product  the  striking  mill  usually  produces. 
Strikes  in  the  spring  of  1920  around  Providence  alone, 
in  this  way  advanced  the  mill  cost  of  scores  of  millions 
of  yards  of  cotton  goods  one  hundred  per  cent. 

Cotton  goods  are  finished  up  into  hundreds  of 
different  kinds  of  cloth,  which  are  sold  through 
factors  and  jobbers  and  many  different  kinds  of  re- 


Strikes  and  High  Cost  of  Clothing  25 

tailers  to  the  public,  each  of  which  adds  a  definite 
percentage  for  handling  and  profit  to  the  price  they 
pay.  This  means  that  the  price  the  public  pays  is 
not  merely  the  one  hundred  per  cent,  more,  but  the 
one  hundred  per  cent,  added  to  in  geometric  ratio. 

In  other  words,  a  strike  works  like  a  stone  thrown 
into  the  water.  If  the  stone  is  small  the  sixth  or 
seventh  succeeding  circle,  which  represents  the  price 
to  you,  the  ultimate  consumer,  is  only  so  big.  If  the 
stone  is  one  hundred  per  cent,  bigger  each  succeeding 
circle  may  be  only  the  same  proportion  greater  than 
the  one  before,  but  there  is  a  tremendous  difference 
in  the  size  of  the  sixth  or  seventh  circle. 

If  you  want  to  get  a  real  idea  of  the  high  cost  of 
strikes  to  you  try  this  experiment  with  such  different 
sized  stones. 


CHAPTER  III 

STRIKES  AND  THE  HIGH  COST  OF  RENT 

The  average  New  Yorker  is  to-day  paying  $32 
more  rent  every  month  on  account  of  strikes  or 
threats  of  strikes. 

Bricks,  that  used  to  cost  $10  to  $12  a  thousand, 
went  up  during  the  summer  of  1920  to  $44  a  thousand. 

Bricklayers  used  to  lay  from  1200  to  1500  bricks  a 
day  for  $5.60  a  day.  But  during  this  same  time  they 
were  laying  only  from  600  to  800  bricks  for  $10  a  day. 

If  it  cost  twice  as  much  to  lay  half  as  many  bricks, 
it  obviously  cost  four  times  as  much  to  lay  each  brick. 
And  when  each  brick  itself  also  cost  four  times  as 
much  to  buy,  it  is  not  hard  to  figure  out  one  very 
material  item  in  the  high  cost  of  building  and  the 
high  cost  of  rent. 

The  reason  why  each  brick  cost  four  times  as  much 
to  buy  and  then  four  times  as  much  to  lay  was  at 
least  seventy-five  per  cent,  because  of  the  spirit  of 
strikes,  the  threat  of  strikes,  and  strikes  themselves. 

New  York  is  surrounded  by  square  miles  of  sand 
and  gravel.     There  are  miles  of  mountains  of  sand 

26 


Strikes  and  the  High  Cost  of  Rent  27 

along  the  Southern  outskirts  of  Chicago.  Yet  in 
New  York  or  Chicago  this  basic  building  material 
went  to  four  to  five  dollars  a  cubic  yard — twice  as 
much  as  coal  cost  a  few  years  ago.  The  only  possible 
reason  was  strikes. 

A  piece  of  limestone,  which  could  be  mined  and 
fully  prepared  for  $1.70  in  Indiana  cost  ten  dollars 
when  erected  in  New  York.  The  reason  has  been 
judicially  determined  to  be  because  of  strikes  and  the 
possibility  of  commanding  the  strike  weapon. 

The  writer  was  in  a  position  where  he  could  watch 
the  erection,  a  few  years  ago,  of  the  building  at  190 
West  Fortieth  Street.  The  ironwork  went  up  twenty- 
two  stories  at  the  rate  of  two  stories  a  day.  The 
brickwork  went  up  at  the  rate  of  more  than  a  story 
a  day. 

There  was  a  much  smaller  building  going  up  at  the 
corner  of  Madison  Avenue  and  Fortieth  Street  in  the 
summer  of  1920.  Each  piece  of  material  in  it  cost 
up  to  four  times  as  much  as  that  in  the  former  build- 
ing. Every  laborer  was  getting  at  least  twice  as 
much  pay.  But  in  spite  of  this  the  building  went  up 
only  half  as  fast.  With  this  conspicuous  and  typical 
example  a  child  could  figure  out  the  reason  for  the 
high  cost  of  building  and  the  cost  of  rent. 

A  New  York  City  school  house  put  up  during  this 
same  period  is  an  exact  duplicate  of  one  put  up  before 


28  The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

the  war.  This  makes  possible  an  exact  comparison 
of  labor  efficiency  in  191 3  and  1920.  Even  on  such  a 
building,  for  the  education  of  their  children,  work 
in  1920  was  33/^  per  cent,  less  efficient.  What  was 
it  then  on  the  ordinary  job?  Often  at  least  fifty 
per  cent,  less  efficient,  say  almost  all  builders  in  all 
fields. 

Moreover,  such  conditions  are  in  no  sense  caused 
by  special  local  conditions  or  limited  to  a  few  locali- 
ties. They  are  nation  wide.  The  following  table 
shows  conditions  in  a  small  mid- western  city: 


Year 

Wages  per  hour 

Bricks  laid  per  day 

1909 

$  -56 

1,100 

1916 

.65 

9OO 

1918 

•75  to  .85 

614 

1919 

1. 00 

587 

1920 

125 

541 

In  Minneapolis  reliable  contractors  state  that  labor 
in  the  building  trades  is  doing  only  from  one  fifth  to 
one  half  a  normal  eight  hours'  work  for  an  abnormally 
large  eight-hour  pay. 

In  Cleveland  a  grand  jury  investigation  reported: 

"Second — We  would  be  remiss  in  our  duty  did  not 

we  point  to  a  lamentable  condition  which  no  doubt 

has  injured  the  very  group  (labor)  which  created  it 

as  much,  if  not  more  so,  than  the  public  generally. 


Strikes  and  the  High  Cost  of  Rent  29 

"We  refer  to  the  present  tendency  upon  the  part 
of  mechanics,  artisans,  and  laborers  of  all  trades  to 
do  less  than  a  full  day's  work. 

"The  testimony  adduced  before  us  indicates  con- 
clusively that  it  requires  approximately  twice  as  long, 
with  the  same  number  of  men,  to  erect  a  house  to- 
day as  it  did  in  pre-war  times. 

"Impartial  tests  show  that  it  takes  twice  as  many 
carpenter  hours  to  do  carpenter's  work  on  a  building 
as  it  did  five  years  ago. 

"Bricklayers  lay  less  than  half  the  number  of 
bricks ;  paperhangers,  painters,  and  plasterers  all  do 
less  than  half  the  work  in  the  same  time  that  they 
did  five  years  ago. 

"Manufacturing  firms  which  make  and  sell  build- 
ing materials  prove  by  their  records  that  while  wages 
have  gone  up  two  hundred  per  cent,  in  some  instances, 
labor  cost  has  gone  up  four  hundred  per  cent.,  indi- 
cating that  their  employees  are  getting  double  pay  for 
one  half  the  work,  as  compared  with  the  period  before 
the  war." 

Yet  any  contractor  or  other  capitalist  who  should 
have  dared  to  suggest  to  labor  that,  with  material 
twice  as  high  or  more  and  with  labor  getting  twice  as 
much  or  more,  labor  itself  ought  to  help  bring  down 
the  cost  of  building  by  doing  at  least  as  much  as  they 
did  when  they  got  half  as  much  pay,  would  un- 


30         The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

doubtedly  have  had  a  strike  on  his  hands  within 
an  hour. 

All  this  applies  merely  to  the  high  cost  of  building* 
on  which  construction  progressed  steadily  even  ii 
slowly.  On  buildings  affected  by  strikes,  high  costs 
not  only  ran  up  much  greater,  but  for  a  special  and 
pernicious  reason,  disproportionately  greater. 

As  is  well  known,  years  ago  the  building  field  was 
one  in  which  strikes  of  the  ordinary  kind — between 
the  workers'  union  and  the  employers — flourished. 
For  a  number  of  obvious  reasons,  however,  the  union 
has  a  very  distinct  strategic  advantage  in  such  con- 
troversies. In  the  first  place,  the  employing  side  was 
weakened  because  the  employer  represented  only 
one  or  a  few  building  operations  and  was  further 
divided  into  contractor,  architect,  and  owner,  often 
with  different  interests,  while  the  union  represented 
all  the  workers  of  a  given  class  in  a  locality. 

Again,  a  building  operation  requires  the  work  of 
many  classes  of  labor,  one  after  the  other — excava- 
tors, steelworkers,  masons,  carpenters,  plumbers, 
etc.,  so  that  a  strike  of  any  one  of  these  classes  of 
workers,  though  they  represented  but  a  small  minor- 
ity of  the  total  workers,  could  hold  up  all  building 
operations. 

As  a  result  of  these  and  other  circumstances, 
builders  long  ago  found  that  it  was  cheaper  in  the 


Strikes  and  the  High  Cost  of  Rent  31 

long  run  to  yield  to  almost  any  demand,  no  matter 
how  unfair,  from  the  unions  rather  than  permit  a 
strike.  Thus,  although  there  has  been  for  years  far 
less  striking  in  the  building  trades  over  controversies 
between  employers  and  employees,  the  strike  threat 
has  served  to  constantly  increase  the  cost  of  building 
far  more  than  actual  strikes  have  increased  costs  in 
many  other  fields.  In  fact,  the  Senate  Calder  com- 
mission shows  that  to-day  at  least  one  third  is  always 
added  to  the  estimated  actual  cost  of  any  building 
operation  to  provide  against  "contingencies" — 
which  consist  chiefly  of  possible  labor  troubles.  A 
large  New  York  contractor  stated  during  the  strike 
mania  period  that  he  would  not  think  of  accepting  a 
contract  at  a  fixed  price  without  adding  fifty  per  cent, 
for  such  "contingencies." 

Just  what  such  "contingencies"  may  consist  of  is 
often  exceedingly  problematical  and  involved,  but 
here  is  one  very  simple  example :  Some  time  ago  the 
steamfitters  decided  that  it  was  below  their  dignity 
to  move  radiators  from  the  ground  floor  up  to  where 
they  had  to  be  installed.  They  demanded,  on  threat 
of  a  strike,  that  somebody  else  be  hired  to  carry  the 
radiators.  The  employers  yielded  and  hired  extra 
labor  to  do  this.  But  the  steamfitters  soon  found 
that  with  this  work  done  for  them  they  could  not 
charge  so  much  time  to  a  given  job.    So  they  de- 


32         The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

manded  on  threat  of  strike — and  some  of  them  did 
strike — that  they  again  be  allowed  to  carry  up  their 
own  radiators! 

As  a  result  of  such  continually  increasing  demands, 
not  only  for  higher  wages  and  shorter  hours,  but  for 
all  sorts  of  special  and  expensive  concessions,  always 
backed  by  the  strike  threat,  costs  of  buildings  have 
gone  up  for  a  decade  out  of  all  proportion  to  normal 
costs,  and  rents  have  continued  to  go  up  even  faster, 
both  because  of  those  costs  themselves  and  because 
of  the  way  they  have  handicapped  and  decreased 
building  and  so  increased  the  competition  for  exist- 
ing buildings. 

But  entirely  in  addition  to  this,  cost  of  building 
and,  consequently,  the  cost  of  rents  went  up  tremen- 
dously after  the  war  as  a  direct  result  of  strikes  of 
two  special  kinds.  These  were :  First,  strikes  in  the 
building  field  itself,  ninety-five  per  cent,  of  which  had 
nothing  to  do  with  any  controversy  between  em- 
ployer and  labor,  but  were  the  results  of  fights  be- 
tween unions;  and  second,  strikes  that  interfered 
with  the  production  or  transportation  of  building 
material  and  raised  its  costs  by  raising  its  cost  of 
production  or  by  causing  a  shortage  which  raised  its 
price  through  competition. 

The  first  of  these  types  of  strikes — that  because  of 
fights  between  union  and  union,  generally  for  juris- 


Strikes  and  the  High  Cost  of  Rent  33 

diction  over  some  particular  class  of  work — when  the 
question  at  issue  is  fought  out  to  a  conclusion  and  one 
or  the  other  union  wins,  has  exactly  the  same  effect 
as  any  other  strike  in  holding  up  the  completion  of  the 
building,  increasing  the  interest  charge  before  any 
return  can  come  from  the  building  and  often  causing 
serious  depreciation  of  unused  or  partly  used  material. 

The  Chicago  Tribune  states  that  in  Chicago  alone 
such  jurisdictional  disputes  and  strikes  have  caused 
the  shelving  of  $150,000,000  of  proposed  building 
operations.  In  the  country  as  a  whole  the  figures 
must  obviously  run  into  billions. 

Jurisdiction  fights  between  unions,  however,  are 
more  and  more  tending  to  result  in  compromises 
which  often  do  far  more  toward  increasing  costs  of 
building  than  the  strikes  themselves.  A  new  type  of 
heating  regulator,  for  example,  is  put  on  the  market 
and  because  of  its  superior  qualities  adopted  in  many 
buildings.  It  consists  of  a  meter  connected  by  pipes 
and  valves  to  the  furnace.  Immediately  the  plum- 
bers' union  and  the  steamfitters'  union  each  claims  it 
should  be  erected  by  their  workers  and  each  calls  a 
strike  to  keep  the  other  out  of  work  until  the  other 
gives  in.  If,  as  has  been  said,  the  strike  results  in  a 
victory  for  either  side,  the  owner  of  the  building  only 
suffers  the  ordinary  losses  of  an  ordinary  strike. 
But  if  there  is  a  compromise  reached,  this  compro- 


34         The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

mise  is  very  frequently  that  the  workers  of  each  union 
shall  do  a  part  of  the  job.  This  means  that  the  work 
which  one  or  two  men  could  easily  and  quickly  do 
by  themselves  must  now  be  done  by  twice  that  num- 
ber of  men,  each  of  whom  has  to  wait  for  the  others  to 
get  through  with  their  operation,  with  the  almost 
invariable  result  that  the  installation  costs  at  least 
twice  as  much  or  more  than  if  one  man  or  group  of 
men  were  allowed  to  go  right  through  with  it  from 
the  beginning. 

Four  unions  called  strikes  to  see  who  should  set 
registers.  Two  unions  now  control  this  one  job. 
Plumbers  and  steamfitters  must  now  work  together 
in  connecting  a  boiler  which  either  could  connect 
easily  and  much  more  quickly  alone. 

Nineteen  strikes  out  of  every  twenty  in  the  build- 
ing trades  all  over  the  country  during  191 9  were  of 
this  kind  and  they  constitute  one  of  the  biggest 
reasons  why  only  half  as  much  work  was  done  for 
twice  as  much  money  and  why  the  price  of  building 
is  going  up  so  high  that  even  the  present  high  rents 
are  not  enough  inducement  for  the  building  of  enough 
new  buildings  to  offer  any  hope  of  rents  being  re- 
duced, at  least  for  years  to  come. 

The  second  element  in  the  high  cost  of  rent  to-day 
for  which  strikes  are  chiefly  responsible,  is  in  the  high 
cost  of  material. 


Strikes  and  the  High  Cost  of  Rent  35 

Our  steel  capacity  in  191 8  was  39,000,000  tons. 
In  1919  the  steel  companies  had  orders  for  44,000,000 
tons  which  they  were  bending  every  effort  to  fill. 
But  the  steel  strike  cut  our  actual  production  that 
year  to  37,000,000  tons. 

Such  a  shortage  as  this,  due  to  the  steel  strike,  has 
a  far  more  serious  effect  on  building  operations  and 
the  cost  of  building  than  the  figures  themselves  in- 
dicate. The  great  majority  of  our  steel  is  bought  by 
big  and  consistent  users  of  steel  like  the  railroads  or 
the  American  Bridge  Company,  or  other  manufac- 
turing plants.  Such  users  are  always  in  the  market 
and  so  in  a  specially  favorable  position  to  get  as  much, 
or  almost  as  much,  steel  as  they  require.  When  there 
is  a  shortage,  therefore,  it  means  that  the  smaller  or 
occasional  user  of  steel  has  to  bear  the  chief  brunt  of 
that  shortage,  which  often  means  there  is  no  steel  at 
all  for  him.  The  builder  is  such  an  occasional  user  of 
steel.  A  shortage  therefore  of  seven  million  tons  in 
the  steel  market  does  not  merely  mean  that  there  is 
twenty  per  cent,  less  steel  for  him,  but  means  there 
is  no  steel  at  all  for  him,  or  so  little  in  proportion  to 
the  demand  that  he  has  to  pay  exorbitant  prices  for  it. 

The  third  and  final  way  in  which  strikes  added  to 
the  high  cost  of  building  was  in  holding  up  or  stopping 
the  transportation  of  building  material. 

All  freight  traffic  is  divided  into  classes.    Smaller, 


36         The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

more  valuable  products  and  perishables  which  re- 
quire careful  and  quick  transportation  are  put  under 
the  head  of  first-class  freight,  more  is  charged  for 
transporting  them,  and  they  are  given  a  preferential 
right  of  way.  In  the  same  way  there  are  second, 
third,  and  fourth  class  freights. 

When,  because  of  such  a  strike  as  that  on  the  Clyde 
and  Mallory  boat  lines  or  for  other  causes,  more 
traffic  has  to  be  transported  by  a  railroad  than  the 
railroad  can  transport,  shippers,  who  are  extremely 
anxious  to  get  their  freight  through,  and  particularly 
where  the  value  of  the  commodity  in  proportion  to 
its  weight  will  warrant  it,  invariably  send  it  under 
a  higher  classification.  In  this  way  the  railroads 
have  their  entire  capacity  demanded  by  first  or 
first  and  second  class  freights,  so  that  third  and 
particularly  fourth  class  freight  cannot  be  handled 
at  all. 

Fourth  class  freight  obviously  consists  of  coal, 
lumber,  stone,  brick,  sand,  and  other  commodities 
which  have  a  very  large  bulk  and  weight  in  propor- 
tion to  their  value. 

Because  coal  is  absolutely  necessary  special  ar- 
rangements are  always  made,  even  under  conditions 
of  the  severest  congestion,  to  give  coal  preference, 
but  the  balance  of  fourth  class  commodities  under 
such  circumstances  hardly  move  at  all.     It  is  also 


Strikes  and  the  High  Cost  of  Rent  37 

obvious  that  most  of  this  balance  which  cannot  be 
moved  at  all  consists  of  building  material. 

This  strike,  then,  on  the  boat  lines  congested  the 
Southern  railroads,  over  which  a  large  part  of  our 
stone,  lumber,  and  other  building  material  is  nor- 
mally transported,  so  that  all  spring  the  rest  of  the 
country  got  practically  no  building  material  from 
this  section. 

The  outlaw  railroad  strike,  which  began  a  little 
later  and  which,  although  it  did  not  tie  up,  handi- 
capped the  transportation  of  the  whole  country, 
operated  in  exactly  the  same  way  to  practically  pre- 
vent the  transportation  of  building  material  from 
any  section  of  the  country. 

Moreover,  as  these  strikes  became  more  and  more 
seriously  felt,  and  it  became  necessary  for  the  rail- 
roads to  use  every  car  with  maximum  efficiency  just 
to  move  coal  and  food  and  the  absolute  necessities  of 
industry,  an  embargo  had  to  be  put  on  building  ma- 
terial, which  prevented  its  transportation  at  all,  even 
at  higher  rates. 

This  combination  of  strikes  and  threats  of  strikes 
was  the  chief  cause  of  the  tremendous  after-the-war 
jump  in  the  cost  of  building  which  affected  every 
part  of  the  country.  But  strikes  and  threats  of  strikes 
very  much  further  exaggerated  conditions  in  many 
special  localities  through  the  grafting  and  blackmail 

208138 


38         The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

tribute  which  they  made  it  possible  for  many  labor 
leaders  to  exact  and  add  to  increase  still  further  the 
cost  of  building.  The  Lockwood  investigation  has 
shown  that  it  was  common  practice  in  New  York  in 
certain  of  the  building  trades  for  union  officials  to 
allow  labor  to  work  only  for  contractors  who  would 
pay  the  officials  themselves  an  extra  fifty  per  cent,  of 
what  they  paid  the  labor  which  these  officials  thus 
allowed  to  work  for  them.  In  other  cases  union 
officials  would  allow  labor  to  work  only  for  contrac- 
tors who  would  make  these  officials  a  fifty  per  cent, 
partner  in  their  profits.  In  one  conspicuous  instance 
the  cost  of  graft  and  blackmail  amounted  to  more 
than  the  cost,  even  at  present  strike  inflated  prices,  of 
the  building  itself. 

That  conditions  approximating  these  have  existed 
in  other  times  and  places  has  been  proved  again  and 
again  by  other  investigations  and  there  is  no  question 
that  they  have  been  adding  their  full  quota  to  the 
high  cost  of  building  in  many  sections  of  the  country 
since  the  war. 

It  is  equally  true  of  course  that  after  strikes,  threats 
of  strikes,  and  embargoes  due  to  strikes  had  forced 
up  the  cost  of  building  materials  and  building,  that 
entirely  illegitimate  conspiracies  and  combinations 
were  formed  to  keep  prices  up.  But  these  were 
aftermaths  not  causes.    They  have  generally  merely 


Strikes  and  the  High  Cost  of  Rent  39 

perpetuated  and  exaggerated  what  strikes  chiefly 
created,  and  often  the  very  basis  of  their  existence 
is  the  ability,  through  a  partnership  with  labor 
leaders,  to  get  labor  to  work  for  them  and  strike 
against  their  competitors. 

Edward  P.  Doyle,  secretary  of  the  Mayor's  housing 
commission,  after  a  thorough  investigation  into  the 
high  cost  of  New  York  rents,  says  the  chief  reason  is 
"labor  unrest,  with  unprofitable  strikes." 

"Capital  can  be  procured,"  he  said  in  1920,  "and 
men  will  be  found  who,  notwithstanding  the  un- 
popularity of  real  estate  ownership,  are  willing  to 
build  houses  because  of  their  imminent  need. 

"At  the  present  time, "  he  goes  on,  "houses  cannot 
be  built  in  large  units  for  less  than  twenty  dollars  a 
room  per  month.  To  decently  house  any  family, 
however  small,  four  rooms  are  absolutely  necessary. 
Eighty  dollars  is  an  uneconomic  rent  for  a  man  re- 
ceiving from  $1500  to  $3000  a  year,  and  these  are  the 
men  who  need  additional  housing  facilities." 

As  typical  of  the  whole  situation,  Commissioner 
Doyle  gives  this  specific  example:  The  City  and 
Suburban  Homes  Company  began  "building  on 
cheap  land,  with  a  splendid  organization,  abundant 
capital,  and  thoroughly  capable  supervision.  The 
original  intention  of  the  company  was  to  rent  rooms 
for  not  more  than  $12  a  month,  but  it  finds  it  cannot 


40         The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

rent  the  rooms  just  built  for  less  than  $72  to  $87  a 
month  for  four  rooms,"  which  means  just  $32  per 
month  more  rent  not  only  now,  but  for  years  to 
come. 

And  this   official   authority   added   again:  "The 
situation  is  entirely  up  to  labor." 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  HIGH   COST  OF   STRIKES  TO  LABOR 

The  families  of  over  two  hundred  thousand  work- 
ers in  Detroit  had  an  unexpectedly  gloomy  1919 
Christmas  because  over  two  hundred  thousand 
workers  suddenly  lost  most  of  several  weeks'  wages 
throughout  a  strike  of  other  workers  hundreds  of 
miles  away. 

The  two  thousand  mine  laborers  in  the  Illinois  coal 
fields  who  struck  during  July,  1920,  forced  15,000 
miners  to  stop  work  and  lose  their  wages. 

Probably  a  million  New  York  laborers  in  scores  of 
fields  lost  a  very  considerable  part  of  their  wages  for 
weeks  at  about  the  same  time  because  of  street  car 
strikes  in  which  a  majority  of  the  operatives  were 
forced  on  a  strike  against  their  own  will. 

Over  1,500,000  workers  had  their  wages  seriously 
cut  for  nearly  three  months  in  the  winter  of  1919- 
1920,  because  two  thousand  printers  insisted  on 
striking  in  breach  of  their  own  contract  and  in  de- 
fiance of  the  orders  of  official  leaders. 

One  thousand  men  on  a  strike  in  one  place  almost 

4* 


42  The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

invariably  means  many  other  workers — often  10,000, 
20,000,  100,000  other  workers — vitally  and  directly 
affected,  yet  often  in  such  utterly  different  fields  and 
often  so  many  hundreds  or  thousands  of  miles  away 
that  even  the  affected  workers  themselves  have  no 
idea  what  it  was  that  affected  them. 

Of  the  3232  major  strikes  during  191 9  there  was 
probably  not  one  that  did  not  throw  out  of  employ- 
ment or  otherwise  reduce  the  wages  of  from  two 
times  to  seven  hundred  times  as  many  other  workers 
as  the  strike  itself  directly  involved.  Yet  it  is  doubt- 
ful if  any  of  these  other  workers  ever  stopped  to 
realize  that  the  direct  and  only  cause  of  their  loss  of 
wages  was  the  other  strike. 

In  raising  the  cost  of  food  and  clothing  and  other 
necessities — in  deranging  manufacturing  and  trans- 
portation, and  not  only  keeping  industry  from  going 
ahead  but  pulling  it  back,  strikes  and  lessened  pro- 
duction raise  general  prices  to  the  laboring  man  and 
hurt  him  just  as  much  as  the  rest  of  the  public. 

But  beyond  this  in  a  peculiar  way  strikes  hit  more 
closely  home  and  much  harder  at  the  laboring  class 
itself  than  at  any  other  class  in  American  life.  For  a 
strike  that  cuts  off  or  limits  for  a  time  the  production 
of  any  commodity — coal  or  iron  or  cotton  cloth  or 
transportation  service — means  that  thousands  and 
often  tens  of  thousands  of  other  laborers  who  depend 


The  High  Cost  of  Strikes  to  Labor  43 

on  that  product  for  their  work  are,  through  that 
shortage  of  supply,  not  able  to  work,  at  least  not  able 
to  work  regularly,  and  for  that  length  of  time  lose  a 
part,  if  not  all,  of  their  wages. 

The  steel  strike  by  raising  the  price  of  steel  not 
only  raised  the  price  of  all  steel  products — knives  and 
sewing  machines  and  every  other  steel  product — to 
the  laboring  public  as  well  as  to  the  rest  of  the  public, 
but  the  shortage  of  steel  also  shut  down  or  partly 
shut  down  hundreds  of  plants  which  couldn't  get 
steel  to  keep  going.  The  stockholders  in  such  plants 
may  have  lost  some  of  their  dividends — but  that  is 
only  a  part  of  the  stockholders'  income;  managers 
and  office  help  may  have  lost  some  raises  in  pay  they 
otherwise  expected — but  their  salaries  went  on  just 
the  same;  but  to  the  laboring  man  such  a  shut-down, 
or  partial  shut-down,  due  to  the  steel  strike  in  which 
he  had  no  direct  interest  or  voice,  meant  that  he  lost 
all  his  pay  for  all  the  time  he  lost  because  of  that 
strike. 

The  first  week  of  the  coal  strike  two  hundred 
thousand  workers  in  Detroit  alone  were  idle — ninety 
per  cent,  of  all  factory  workers  in  Indianapolis 
dropped  to  half  time,  250,000  workers  in  Chicago  had 
their  wages  entirely  cut  off — and  the  same  condition 
prevailed  in  almost  every  part  of  the  country.  If,  as 
was  claimed,  every  man,  woman,  and  child  of  all 


44         The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

classes  in  the  United  States  lost  ten  dollars  each 
through  this  strike,  it  is  probable  that  the  loss  in  a 
large  part  of  the  laboring  families  of  the  country 
reached  fifty  dollars  each. 

At  election  time  in  19 19,  nearly  three  thousand 
workers  of  the  American  Locomotive  Company's 
Schenectady  plant  had  been  for  some  time  previously 
out  of  employment.  J.  B.  Bellingham,  an  employee 
of  the  General  Electric  Company,  president  of  one 
of  the  labor  unions  in  the  electric  field,  and  a  recog- 
nized labor  leader,  who  was  running  for  office  on  the 
Socialist  ticket,  made  a  special  appeal  to  these  Ameri- 
can Locomotive  Company  employees  on  the  ground 
of  their  unemployment,  demanding  again  and  again, 
with  oratorical  emphasis,  of  them,  of  the  capitalists, 
and  of  the  whole  country  why  these  capable  work- 
men, who  were  willing  to  work,  whose  families  des- 
perately needed  their  wages,  should  not  have  work. 

The  answer  in  this  particular  instance  happened  to 
be  particularly  easy;  the  exceptionally  high  wages 
which  another  specially  powerful  class  of  labor  had 
forced  from  the  railroads,  plus  the  constant  strikes 
of  other  classes  of  labor  in  the  railroad  field,  had  so 
reduced  both  the  railroads'  income  and  the  use  to 
which  the  railroads  were  able  to  put  the  equipment 
they  had,  that  they  were  at  that  time  absolutely 
unable  to  buy  the  extra  locomotives,  the  manufac- 


The  High  Cost  of  Strikes  to  Labor  45 

turing  of  which  would  have  given  employment  to  these 
men. 

Moreover  it  is  not  at  all  necessary  that  the  strike 
be  in  some  big,  conspicuously  basic  industry  like  coal 
or  steel  to  make  a  tremendous  dent  in  the  wages  of 
immense  numbers  of  outside  workers  whom  the 
strikers  themselves  undoubtedly  never  considered  in 
the  situation. 

A  street  car  strike,  which  in  our  large  cities  often 
affects  millions  of  people,  making  it  difficult  and  often 
impossible  to  get  to  and  from  their  work  at  least  for 
more  than  a  few  hours  a  day,  puts  a  particular  burden 
on  labor  because,  while  such  a  situation  seldom 
affects  salaries,  for  every  hour  that  labor  loses,  wages 
completely  stop. 

Take  the  case  of  a  strike  of  which  the  public  out- 
side of  the  little  local  area  might  never  hear — a  strike 
among  the  cotton  spinners  in  Lowell.  Such  a  strike 
by  a  comparatively  few  thousand  primary  producers 
of  cotton  immediately  involves  a  vastly  greater 
number  of  cotton  weavers,  cotton  bleachers,  cotton 
print  men,  etc.,  so  that  many  times  as  many  workers 
in  the  Lowell  section  alone  as  actually  struck  lose 
their  wages. 

But  this  includes  only  the  first  of  the  outside  effects 
of  such  a  strike.  In  New  York,  makers  of  all  kind  of 
women's  and  children's  undergarments,   wrappers, 


46         The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

dresses,  aprons;  in  Troy,  makers  of  collars  and  shirts; 
in  Utica,  makers  of  sheets  and  pillow  cases ;  in  Ips- 
wich, Holyoke,  and  Rockford,  makers  of  men's, 
women's  and  children's  hosiery — in  short,  tens  of 
thousands  of  workers  all  over  the  country  also  lose 
time  and  wages  because  of  the  original  strike  whose 
cause  they  did  not  know  and  whose  outcome,  of 
success  or  failure,  in  no  way  benefits  them. 

No  better  example  perhaps  can  be  cited  of  how  a 
strike  of  a  comparatively  few  men  can  have  the  most 
far-reaching  effects  on  the  work  and  wages  of  a  vast 
number  of  other  workers — no  better  illustration  need 
be  given  of  how  helpless  such  a  great  body  of  workers 
is  to  prevent  an  entirely  unjust  and  unnecessary 
petty  strike  from  seriously  injuring  them  than  the 
case  of  the  printers'  strike  in  New  York  in  the  fall  of 
1919. 

It  is  easy  to  see  how  a  strike  of  printers  could 
injure  their  employers,  how  by  holding  up  the  publi- 
cation of  newspapers  and  magazines  it  could  incon- 
venience the  public,  including  the  labor  public;  but  it 
does  not  appear  at  first  blush  how  a  printers'  strike 
could  throw  any  great  bodies  of  outside  labor  out  of 
employment  or  even  seriously  affect  their  employ- 
ment or  wages.    Yet  it  can  and  did. 

In  New  York  City  there  are  a  number  of  great 
mail  order  houses  who  sell  to  eight  or  ten  million 


The  High  Cost  of  Strikes  to  Labor  47 

customers,  scattered  in  all  parts  of  the  country, 
hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars'  worth  of  merchandise 
every  year.  Every  such  sale  must  of  course  be  soli- 
cited entirely  by  large,  elaborately  printed  catalogues. 
They  must  be  negotiated  entirely  by  letter  and 
closed  entirely  through  other  printed  matter. 

But  in  addition  to  these  regular  mail  order  retailers 
there  are  a  great  many  other  firms — manufacturers 
who  sell  to  retailers  by  mail,  mail  order  jobbers,  and 
both  manufacturers  and  jobbers  whose  salesmen  sell 
from  catalogues  instead  of  carrying  samples — all  of 
whom  depend  for  their  sales  on  this  kind  of  printed 
matter. 

In  the  fall  of  19 19,  right  in  the  midst  of  the  pre- 
paratory season,  when  the  millions  of  catalogues  and 
letters  and  circulars  were  being  printed,  which  were 
to  offer  these  various  lines  of  spring  merchandise,  a 
few  thousand  New  York  printers  stopped  work. 
They  themselves  did  not  dare  call  this  a  strike. 
Many  of  the  strikers  had  written  contracts  with  their 
employers,  with  months  yet  to  run,  guaranteeing 
that  they  would  not  strike.  Their  national  officials 
decided  that  under  the  circumstances  they  had  no 
right  to  strike,  and  forbade  them  to  strike.  So  these 
few  thousand  men  merely  all  together,  at  the  same 
time,  went  off  on  a  vacation. 

As  a  result  of  this  wholly  unwarranted  action  of 


4$         The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

about  two  thousand  printers,  millions  of  catalogues 
were  not  printed  or  were  printed  months  late.  And, 
to  quote  Mr.  Roger  Babson,  who  has  made  a  special 
statistical  study  of  this  situation,  "the  whole  manu- 
facturing programs  of  hundreds  of  these  firms  were 
held  up  because  they  could  not  get  out  their  cata- 
logues. It  is  estimated  that  these  firms  employ 
over  500,000  people,  and  indirectly  give  work  to 
1,000,000  others.  Thus  the  strike  of  only  a  few 
thousand  men  in  one  industry  affected  1,500,000  in 
another  line  of  production.  And  remember,  that 
back  of  this  1,500,000  are  still  more  men  and  women 
whose  work  and  earnings  suffered." 

One  billion  dollars  would  be  a  most  conservative 
figure  at  which  to  put  the  wages  lost  in  19 19  by  work- 
ers who  did  not  strike  because  of  strikes  by  other 
workers. 

This  means  that  ten  million  workers  in  the  whole 
country,  entirely  in  addition  to  all  they  suffered  from 
raises  in  prices  due  to  strikes,  also  lost  over  one 
hundred  dollars  each  out  of  their  own  pay  envelopes 
because  of  strikes  in  which  they  had  no  voice  or  other 
interest.  Tens  of  thousands  of  these  workers,  of 
course,  lost  much  more  than  this. 

But  how  many  workers  have  ever  seriously  thought 
of  the  strike  question  from  this  angle?    How  many    » 
to-day,  when  strikes  have  become  one  of  our  most 


The  High  Cost  of  Strikes  to  Labor  49 

conspicuous  national  problems,  are  making  any 
attempt  frankly  and  honestly  to  consider  how  many 
of  the  strikes  which  caused  these  losses  have  been 
worth  what  they  cost  to  anybody  ? 


CHAPTER  V 

STRIKING  AT  THE  NERVE  CENTERS  OF  INDUSTRY 

Coal  cost  $3.75  a  ton  at  the  mine  in  July,  1920. 
This  price  included  the  cost  and  profit  to  the  operator 
and  all  labor  costs  of  mining  and  cleaning  and  making 
the  product  ready  for  the  ultimate  consumer.  Yet 
at  exactly  the  same  time  coal  cost  seventeen  dollars  a 
ton  at  Hampton  Roads  and  twenty-two  dollars  a  ton 
in  New  England.  The  basic  reason  was  strikes,  but 
strikes  entirely  outside  of  the  coal  field. 

The  basic  cause  of  the  high  cost  of  building  ma- 
terial was  as  has  been  emphasized  strikes — but 
strikes  entirely  outside  of  the  building  field. 

It  was  a  strike,  but  not  a  strike  by  the  growers 
or  jobbers  or  retailers  of  fruit  and  vegetables,  which 
forced  every  family  in  the  North  Atlantic  section  to 
pay  one  hundred  per  cent,  more  for  their  fruit  and 
vegetables. 

The  1,500,000  men  whose  time  and  wages  were 
reduced  by  the  small  printers'  strike,  the  millions  of 
men  that  were  put  out  of  work  by  the  coal  strike  and, 
in  general,  by  far  the  biggest  losses  and  costs  from 

50 


Striking  at  Nerve  Centers         51 

strikes  have  been  caused  by  strikes  which  occurred 
entirely  outside  the  industries  most  injured. 

There  are,  because  of  the  intricate  interrelation  of 
the  human  body,  certain  vital  nerve  centers  whose 
smallest  disruption  may  have  an  effect  on  the  whole 
human  system  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  area 
seemingly  affected. 

A  man  familiar  with  anatomy  can  by  jabbing  a 
needle  into  certain  of  these  nerve  centers,  though  he 
leave  a  wound  no  bigger  than  a  needle  point,  paralyze 
some  major  function  of  the  body. 

Water,  next  to  air,  is  the  most  plentiful  and  the 
most  necessary  thing  to  human  life  in  the  whole 
world.  Yet  to-day  five  million  New  Yorkers  depend 
for  every  drop  of  the  water  they  use  on  a  source 
twenty  miles  outside  of  the  city  limits,  which  very 
few  of  them  have  ever  even  seen.  If  anything  should 
happen  to  this  source  for  a  single  day  five  million 
New  Yorkers  could  not  wash.  Within  a  week  millions 
of  people  would  not  be  able  to  get  anything  to  drink 
and  would  have  to  give  up  their  businesses  and  their 
homes  and  move  out  of  the  city. 

In  the  same  way  not  only  New  Yorkers,  but  most 
of  the  rest  of  our  people,  have  to  depend  for  the  food 
they  eat  to  keep  them  alive,  for  the  fuel  they  burn  for 
light  and  heat,  for  the  clothes  they  wear  and  for 
practically  every  other  necessary  of  living  on  intricate 


52         The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

and  distant  systems  of  production,  transportation, 
and  distribution,  most  of  which  they  never  see  and 
scarcely  know  about  and  whose  operation  is  in  the 
hands  of  other  men  they  do  not  know  and  over  whom 
they  have  little  more  control  than  an  ordinary  cell 
in  the  human  body  has  over  the  intricate  organiza- 
tion of  the  human  body  that  keeps  it  alive. 

Thus  just  as  in  the  human  body  so  in  our  vast, 
intricate  industrial  organization  there  are  many  vital 
nerve  centers  whose  smallest  disruption  may  have  an 
effect  on  our  whole  economic  system  out  of  all  propor- 
tion to  the  area  affected. 

And  the  skilled  labor  leader  to-day,  intimately 
familiar  with  our  economic  anatomy,  has  discovered 
that  he  can,  by  striking  at  these  nerve  centers, 
though  the  disruption  may  not  itself  appear  on  the 
surface  to  be  big  or  important,  paralyze  whole  sec- 
tions of  our  economic  body. 

The  nation's  coal  supply  is  of  course  one  of  the  two 
most  conspicuous  of  such  nerve  centers. 

Considered  in  bulk,  or  in  mine  value,  coal  repre- 
sents less  than  two  per  cent,  of  the  total  of  American 
commodity  production.  All  the  men  engaged  in  coal 
mining  represent  less  than  two  per  cent,  of  the  total 
of  America's  workers.  Yet  coal  is  out  of  all  propor- 
tion to  these  figures  the  most  vital  necessity  in 
America's  industrial  life. 


Striking  at  Nerve  Centers         53 

Seriously  interrupt  our  supply  of  wheat  or  wool  or 
cotton  or  steel  or  any  other  single  product,  and  you 
may  stop  ten,  twenty,  or  perhaps  forty  per  cent,  of  all 
industry.  Seriously  interrupt  the  supply  of  coal,  and 
ninety  per  cent,  of  industry,  transportation,  heat, 
light,  and  almost  as  big  a  proportion  of  the  food  and 
water  supply  of  the  whole  country  would  be  shut  off. 

In  November,  1919,  certain  labor  leaders  stopped 
this  less  than  two  per  cent,  of  our  production  by  the 
strikes  of  this  less  than  two  per  cent,  of  our  workers 
for  a  few  weeks  and  threatened  to  stop  it  longer. 
The  actual  non-production  was  perhaps  not  more 
than  fifty  million  dollars'  worth  of  coal,  but  this  mere 
beginning  of  the  strike,  coupled  with  the  threat  of 
continuing  it,  immediately  threw  millions  of  men  out 
of  work  and  cost  the  country  immediately  hundreds 
of  millions  of  dollars. 

If  these  labor  leaders  could  have  continued  to  stop 
this  mere  two  per  cent,  of  our  industrial  production 
they  would  have  stopped  America's  total  income. 
If  they  could  actually  stop  this  mere  two  per  cent,  of 
our  production  only  long  enough  to  exhaust  our  re- 
serve supplies  of  coal,  every  man  in  the  country  but 
the  farmer  would  have  been  out  of  a  job  and  every 
city  in  the  country  would  have  been  depopulated. 

The  railroads,  though  in  a  different  way,  are  every 
bit  as  vital  as  the  coal  supply,  not  only  to  the  indus- 


54         The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

trial  but  to  the  human  life  of  the  country.  Actually 
stop  railroad  operation  for  the  few  weeks  necessary 
to  exhaust  the  limited  food  supply  on  the  grocers' 
shelves  and  in  the  warehouses,  and  every  man, 
woman,  and  child  in  every  big  city  in  the  country 
would  have  to  board  out  or  hire  out  on  some  farm 
— and  most  of  them  would  have  to  walk  to  get 
there. 

But  strikes  that  attempt  to  tie  up  the  whole  coal 
industry  or  the  railroads  are  too  much  like  conspicu- 
ously holding  a  dagger  at  the  nation's  industrial 
heart.  They  incite  immediate  resistance  by  the 
whole  country  and  though  the  country  may  suffer 
severely  in  the  struggle,  as  it  did  in  the  coal  strike, 
such  a  strike  is  too  utterly  audacious  really  to  succeed. 

If  the  coal  strike  may  be  likened  to  holding  a  dagger 
at  the  nation's  industrial  heart,  where  the  very  con- 
spicuousness  of  the  strike  aroused  instant  general 
resistance,  the  outlaw  railroad  strike  might  be  likened 
to  the  sticking  of  fine  needles  into  one  after  another 
of  the  vital  nerve  centers  along  the  spinal  column  and 
quickly  pulling  each  out  again  as  soon  as  the  act  was 
discovered. 

The  outlaw  railroad  strike  represents  the  develop- 
ment of  a  new  strategy  of  strikes  which,  unless  the 
American  people  understand  its  method  and  its  aim, 
may  make  strikes  of  the  future  as  much  more  expen- 


Striking  at  Nerve  Centers         55 

sive  than  present  strikes,  as  present  strikes  have  been 
more  costly  than  those  of  the  past. 

The  basis  of  this  strategy  was  its  inconspicuous- 
ness.  It  carefully  avoided  ever  at  any  one  time  call- 
ing out  any  great  number  of  men.  It  did  not  want 
the  public  to  become  aroused  as  it  had  been  in  the 
coal  strike.  It  did  everything  possible  to  keep  from 
the  public  any  inkling  of  how  vital  and  costly  this 
strike  was  planned  to  be. 

Instead,  it  called  out  only  small  bodies  of  men  at 
a  time — sometimes  very  small  bodies  of  men — now 
here,  now  there,  but  always  exactly  when  and  where 
they  could  do  the  utmost  damage. 

If  some  special  yard  at  some  terminal  point  was 
having  a  specially  heavy  run  of  traffic,  right  at  the 
height  of  it  the  locomotive  firemen  would  be  called 
out.  The  engineers  and  conductors  and  switchmen 
and  brakemen  would  all  be  at  their  posts,  so  that 
only  a  fifth  of  the  men — perhaps  not  more  than  a  few 
dozen — would  be  on  strike.  But  without  the  fire- 
men, and  particularly  because  none  of  the  other  men 
would  dare  break  union  rules  to  substitute  as  fire- 
men, the  trains  could  not  be  operated  and  the  whole 
yard  would  become  hopelessly  congested. 

But  as  soon  as  the  particular  strike,  and  the  actual 
results  it  was  having,  began  to  get  the  public's  notice, 
the  men  would  go  back  to  work  and  another  specially 


56         The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

busy  freight  yard  at  some  distant,  entirely  different 
point  would  be  selected.  Here,  except  that  perhaps 
the  brakemen  instead  of  the  firemen  would  be  called 
out,  the  whole  program  would  be  exactly  repeated. 

This  strategy  of  strikes  of  course  did  not  keep 
freight  from  coming  through  in  large  quantities.  It 
was  not  intended  that  it  should.  If  freight  had  been 
conspicuously  held  up  at  any  one  time  this  would 
have  aroused  public  opinion  to  the  real  state  of 
affairs  and  some  definite  solution  might  have  been 
found. 

Instead  this  policy  was  cunningly  calculated  merely 
persistently  partially  to  paralyze  traffic.  For  per- 
sistently partially  paralyzing  traffic  meant  a  per- 
sistent partial  starving  of  industry,  which  is  far  more 
punishing  and  costly  to  industry  and  so  to  the  whole 
public  than  any  sudden  stopping  of  traffic  could  be. 

That  this  is  true  is  conspicuously  evidenced  by  the 
fact  that  while  the  production  of  coal  was  practically 
stopped  by  the  coal  strike  the  price  did  not  go  up 
more  than  a  few  dollars  a  ton,  the  persistent  partial 
starvation  of  the  coal  market  over  a  period  of  several 
months  sent  the  price  of  coal  that  cost  $3.75  a  ton  at 
the  mine  to  $22  a  ton  and  up  in  New  England. 

There  are  two  reasons  why  persistent  partial 
starvation  is  most  punishing  and  costly.  One  is 
economic  and  the  other  is  psychological.    Both  these 


Striking  at  Nerve  Centers         57 

reasons  must  be  clearly  understood  before  the  in- 
sidious danger  of  this  new  type  of  strike  strategy  can 
be  really  appreciated. 

It  is  a  well-known  economic  principle  that  short- 
age invariably  advances  prices  out  of  all  proportion 
to  the  actual  amount  of  shortage. 

The  best  authorities  estimated  that  at  no  time 
during  the  war  was  our  production  of  normal  neces- 
saries curtailed  more  than  twenty  per  cent.  Yet 
prices  went  up  107  per  cent. 

In  191 7  the  flaxseed  crop  was  only  forty-five  per 
cent,  less  than  the  year  before,  but  the  price  that 
resulted  from  that  shortage  was  one  hundred  per 
cent,  higher. 

The  four  million  suits  of  clothes  by  which  strikes 
lessened  our  supply  of  certain  classes  of  clothes  in 
1 919  was  less  than  thirty- three  per  cent,  of  our  pro- 
duction, yet  it  raised  the  prices  of  all  such  suits  over 
one  hundred  per  cent. 

As  a  part  of  its  policy  to  keep  prices  as  low  as  pos- 
sible during  the  war  the  United  States  Steel  Corpora- 
tion consistently  sold  its  entire  output  of  nails  at 
prices  under  those  of  19 14.  Based  on  such  prices 
these  nails  should  have  retailed  at  about  five  dollars 
a  keg.  As  a  matter  of  fact  due  to  the  general  short- 
age all  nails  went  to  about  twelve  dollars  a  keg  retail. 

But  the  persistent  partial  starvation  of  a  market 


58         The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

also  adds  a  psychological  factor  that  very  much 
exaggerates  this  normal  price  tendency  to  go  up 
disproportionately  to  the  actual  amount  of  the 
shortage. 

A  man  who  is  used  to  having  plenty  to  eat  may  be 
able  to  continue  to  live  indefinitely  even  if  his  rations 
are  reduced  to  the  actual  point  of  subsistence.  But  if 
in  addition  through  this  long  period  he  is  continually 
threatened  with  having  no  food  at  all,  it  can  be  easily 
understood  how  he  would  get  into  a  state  of  nerves 
where  he  would  do  almost  anything  or  pay  almost 
anything  to  insure  himself  of  really  enough  to  eat 
again  even  if  only  for  a  while. 

During  the  coal  strike  manufacturers  everywhere 
faced  the  possibility  of  getting  no  coal  at  all.  But  it 
was  a  problem  they  could  all  face  together  and  fight 
together.  It  was  a  definite  condition,  and  there  was 
a  definite  enemy  to  fight. 

During  the  outlaw  railroad  strike,  however,  they 
knew  that  plenty  of  coal  was  being  mined.  William 
B.  Culver,  of  the  Federal  Trade  Commission,  had 
publicly  reported  that  "there  is  sufficient  coal  and 
there  are  sufficient  flat  cars  to  handle  our  peak 
production  of  coal."  Yet  because  of  this  half  star- 
vation strategy  of  the  outlaw  railroad  strikers  they 
were  having  coal  just  dribbled  out  to  them.  For 
months  they  had  had  barely  enough  or  not  quite 


Striking  at  Nerve  Centers         59 

enough,  and  almost  every  day  they  had  faced  the 
specter  of  having  even  the  dribble  cut  off. 

They  realized  that  their  having  coal  or  not  having 
it  depended  on  the  whim  of  strike  leaders,  who  were 
utterly  irresponsible  and  without  scruple.  Such  a 
condition  was  bound  sooner  or  later  to  get  on  the 
nerves  of  men  that  have  to  have  coal  to  run  their 
business,  till  they  became  willing  to  pay  almost  any- 
thing to  be  sure  of  having  enough  coal  at  least  for  a 
while. 

Of  course  somebody  got  vast  profits  out  of  this 
difference  between  $3.75  and  $17  to  $22  a  ton.  Sub- 
sequent investigations  have  made  a  big  point  of  the 
profiteering  of  groups  of  individuals  who  through 
foresight,  luck,  or  special  influence  got  a-hold  of  coal 
and  resold  it  at  these  figures.  But  this  does  not 
change  the  basic  fact  in  the  situation,  namely:  that 
the  semi-starvation  strategy  of  the  outlaw  railroad 
strikers  forced  industry  into  the  position  and  frame 
of  mind  where  it  was  willing  to  pay  such  prices. 

Exactly  the  same  situation  existed  in  regard  to 
most  other  goods  and  materials.  Thousands  of  manu- 
facturers never  knew  from  day  to  day  whether  or 
not  to-morrow  they  would  have  enough  raw  ma- 
terial to  keep  their  plants  going.  Thousands  of  them 
had  their  warehouses  packed  to  overflowing  with  a 
balance  of  goods  they  could  not  deliver  and  on  which, 


60         The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

therefore  they  could  not  collect  the  money  which  they 
needed  to  run  their  business.  Such  men,  too,  inevi- 
tably sooner  or  later  reached  a  state  of  nerves  where 
they  would  pay  almost  anything  to  get  such  raw 
material  as  was  available  and  pay  express  or  any 
other  rate  to  ship  their  goods — all  of  which  added  to 
costs  and  prices  at  every  turn. 

Chamber  of  Commerce  officials  and  other  conser- 
vative men  familiar  with  the  results  all  speak  of  the 
cost  of  the  outlaw  railroad  strike  in  terms  of  billions 
of  dollars — far  more  than  the  coal  strike  cost. 

The  public  is  used  to  big,  conspicuous  strikes,  like 
the  clothing  or  the  coal  or  the  steel  strikes,  where 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  men  openly  quit  their  work 
and  the  issue  and  consequences  are  conspicuous. 
Public  opinion  is  generally  able  to  understand  and 
judge  and  deal  with  such  a  strike. 

But  in  a  strike  where  seldom  more  than  a  few 
thousand  men  are  on  strike  at  a  time,  and  they  are 
scattered — where  who  the  strikers  are  and  what  the 
issues  are,  are  almost  unknown,  and  because  of  that 
fact  purposely  muddled,  how  can  public  opinion  be 
aroused  or  organized? 

Yet  the  present  and  increasing  complexities  of 
modern  industrial  life  offer  wide  opportunities  for 
such  insidious  ' '  gas  attacks ' '  and  labor  leaders  will 
undoubtedly  become  more  and  more  skillful  in  the 


Striking  at  Nerve  Centers         61 

technique  of  making  them  more  and  more  costly 
to  the  public.  The  obvious  defense  is  not  to  wait 
for  such  attacks  but  to  put  out  of  action  in  advance 
the  weapon  through  which  they  are  made. 


CHAPTER    VI 

STRIKES  AND  INEFFICIENT  DISTRIBUTION 
OF  LABOR 

One  of  the  most  conspicuous  facts  about  the  labor 
situation  after  the  war  was  the  practical  impossibility 
of  getting  labor  for  many  ordinary  purposes.  Subur- 
banites were  unable  to  get  their  lawns  cut;  they 
couldn't  get  their  coal  delivered  when  it  was  needed. 
Plumbing  and  electric  lights  went  unfixed  for  days 
and  weeks  because  plumbers  and  electricians  couldn't 
get  enough  help  to  handle  their  work.  Storekeepers 
couldn't  get  clerks  or  deliverymen  to  take  care  of 
their  business.  Apartments  were  poorly  heated, 
ashes  accumulated  in  the  basements  and  dirt  col- 
lected in  the  hallways  because  owners  couldn't  get 
help.  And  a  hundred  and  one  jobs  that  used  to  be 
done  regularly  and  as  a  matter  of  course  were  not 
done  because  the  labor  was  not  to  be  had. 

Yet  at  the  same  time  in  these  same  cities  the 
clothing  trade  was  employing  thirty-five  per  cent, 
more  men  than  it  had  ever  required  to  do  the  same 
work  before,  which  unnecessary  and  expensive  extra 

62 


Inefficient  Distribution  of  Labor    63 

labor  had  been  added  to  and  was  maintained  in  the 
industry  through  strikes  and  threats  of  strikes. 

In  certain  departments  of  our  railroads  there  were 
at  this  same  time  250,000  more  men  on  the  pay  rolls 
than  it  had  ever  taken  to  do  the  same  work  before, 
whom  the  railroads  could  not  then  send  back  to 
fields  where  they  were  really  needed  because  of  the 
threat  of  strikes  which  would  have  been  even  more 
expensive  than  continuing  to  pay  wages  to  this  un- 
necessary labor.  And  in  exactly  the  same  way  many 
other  industries  also  were  burdened  with  far  more 
men  than  they  needed  whom  they  also  could  not  send 
back  into  other  fields  where  they  were  needed  because 
of  the  fear  of  strikes  which  would  have  been  even 
more  expensive  than  the  carrying  of  this  extra  burden 
on  the  pay  roll. 

Farmers  all  through  the  country  were,  during  this 
period,  in  crying  need  of  labor  in  the  harvest  field, 
yet  tens  of  thousands  of  men  who  used  to  take  care 
of  the  nation's  crops  were  at  the  same  time  in  the 
same  States  getting  twenty  dollars  per  week  for  two 
days'  work  in  the  coal  mines,  not  only  keeping  a 
reasonable  number  of  miners  from  working  regularly, 
but  tremendously  and  needlessly  cutting  down  the 
nation's  food  supply  and  adding  to  the  price  of  both 
food  and  coal.  This  is  one  of  the  results  of  the  coal 
strike. 


64         The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

America  lost  some  six  million  immigrants  who 
would  normally  have  come  to  swell  our  labor  ranks, 
because  of  the  war.  During  the  war  we  made  up  a 
large  part  of  this  lack  not  only  through  more  efficient 
machinery  and  through  greater  individual  efficiency 
but  particularly  through  cooperative  efficiency  in 
the  handling  and  distribution  of  labor.  We  could 
in  the  same  way  have  made  up  a  large  part  of  labor's 
numerical  deficiency  after  the  war,  but  as  a  matter 
of  fact  we  tremendously  exaggerated  it  both  by  in- 
dividual inefficiency  and  by  a  tremendous  inefficiency 
in  the  distribution  of  labor.  Not  only  have  strikes 
been  chiefly  to  blame  for  this,  but  the  perpetuation 
of  this  inefficient  distribution  of  labor  was  one  of  the 
chief  aims  and  reasons  for  many  of  the  biggest  strikes 
which  followed  the  war. 

During  the  whole  war,  but  particularly  after 
America  entered  the  war,  there  was  a  tremendous 
extra  demand  for  labor  in  many  special  fields — par- 
ticularly to  mine  coal,  to  make  munitions,  special 
machines,  uniforms,  and  such  war  equipment.  In 
order  to  get  quickly  the  labor  required  to  meet  the 
emergency  demand  in  these  special  industries  unpre- 
cedented wages  were  offered. 

We  all  remember  how,  attracted  by  these  wages, 
tens  of  thousands  of  porters,  clerks,  barbers,  farm 
hands,  and  all  kinds  of  labor  from  every  kind  of  mis- 


Inefficient  Distribution  of  Labor    63 

cellaneous  occupations  and  from  many  of  the  less 
essential  industries  flocked  to  the  munition  plants 
and  into  other  "war"  industries. 

It  is,  of  course,  natural  that  when  the  war  ended 
this  extra  labor  wanted  to  stay  in  these  same  indus- 
tries at  the  same  high  wages.  Moreover,  a  great 
proportion  of  these  men  had  at  once  joined  the  unions 
in  their  new  trades.  To-day  in  the  country  as  a  whole 
twice  as  many  workers  are  organized  as  in  191 6.  In 
the  clothing  trade  the  unions  have  six  times  as  many 
members  as  they  had  before  the  war,  and  in  many 
of  the  great  special  war  industries  the  proportion  is 
nearly  as  great.  This  new  labor  not  only  joined  the 
unions,  but  began  at  once  to  take  a  very  active  part 
in  union  affairs.  In  fact  there  is  no  doubt  that  a 
great  deal  of  the  radicalism  that  is  now  permeating 
our  supposedly  more  conservative  unions  is  due  to  the 
influx  and  influence  of  this  new  and  heretofore  non- 
descript labor. 

Not  only,  therefore,  did  these  tremendous  groups 
of  new  war  workers  want  to  stay  in  their  new  indus- 
tries instead  of  going  back  to  their  old  work,  but  the 
unions  which  they  had  joined  and  in  which  they 
became  such  an  influencing  factor  did  not  want  them 
to  go  back,  because  it  would  mean  loss  of  membership 
and  so  of  income  from  dues  and  of  power  to  the  unions. 

Moreover,  union  officers  were  quick  to  see  not  only 
s 


66         The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

that  they  could  maintain  the  strength  of  their  unions, 
but  that  they  could  increase  their  own  hold  on  their 
unions  in  proportion  as  they  made  it  a  personal  and 
union  policy  to  keep  these  men  in  their  attractive 
new  jobs. 

The  war  was  over  in  November,  191 8.  In  Decem- 
ber, 19 1 8,  the  first  of  the  great  after-the-war  strikes 
occurred  among  the  employees  of  the  General  Elec- 
tric Company.  The  one  and  only  real  reason  why  the 
strike  was  called  was  to  forestall  the  action  union 
leaders  feared  the  General  Electric  Company  might 
take  of  reducing  its  working  force  to  its  pre-war 
strength  of  old  and  able  employees  by  releasing  its 
half-trained  special  war  workers  to  their  former 
occupations. 

The  leaders  of  this  strike  emphasized  frankly  and 
openly  that  the  paramount  thing  they  were  striking 
for  was  a  forty-four  instead  of  a  forty-eight-hour 
week,  in  order  that  all  union  members  might  be  con- 
tinued in  their  present  jobs.  As  a  matter  of  fact 
certain  of  the  strike  leaders  at  Schenectady  openly 
emphasized  this  point  to  the  extent  of  insisting  that 
every  union  member  should,  if  it  became  necessary, 
work  only  half  time — of  course  at  a  sufficient  rate  of 
income  to  maintain  his  same  scale  of  living  all  the 
time — in  order  that  every  union  "brother"  might 
be  continued  in  employment. 


Inefficient  Distribution  of  Labor    67 

This  frankness,  however — this  open  insistence  that 
the  main  object  of  the  strike  was  to  keep  more  men  in 
a  given  amount  of  work  than  that  work  would  legiti- 
mately support — was  undoubtedly  one  of  the  chief 
reasons  why  the  strike  failed.  For  the  older  skilled 
workers,  who  had  served  their  apprenticeship  in  the 
trade  and  had  been  five,  ten,  or  fifteen  years  in  their 
present  jobs,  could  naturally  not  see  the  equity  in 
being  asked  to  sacrifice  their  pay  and  perhaps  even 
their  own  jobs  by  striking  solely  in  order  that  half- 
skilled  men,  who  had  already  enjoyed  a  year  or  two 
of  pay  out  of  all  proportion  to  their  efficiency  and 
training,  should  be  artificially  maintained  in  these 
special  privileges  instead  of  going  back  to  the  work 
where  they  were  needed  and  belonged. 

This  strike  was  lost.  The  principle  that  a  union 
merely  for  its  own  advantage,  or  rather  that  union 
officials  for  their  own  advantage,  should  be  allowed  to 
insist  that  production  efficiency  in  their  field  should 
arbitrarily  be  lowered  and  the  cost  of  production  be 
arbitrarily  increased  by  forcing  the  employment  of 
three  men  to  do  the  work  that  two  men  could  easily 
and  normally  do  was  repudiated  chiefly  by  the  older 
and  more  skilled  workers  themselves.  It  is  interest- 
ing to  note,  however,  that  in  spite  of  the  defeat  of 
this  strike  and  of  the  inefficient,  expensive  principle 
that   this  strike    was   undertaken   to  enforce — un- 


68         The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

doubtedly  because  they  were  defeated  and  the  past 
efficiency  and  economy  of  production  maintained — 
the  increased  demand  for  electrical  equipment  and 
the  entrance  of  the  General  Electric  Company  into 
certain  new  fields  actually  kept  employed  practically 
all  this  special  war  labor  at  or  at  better  than  war 
wages. 

In  other  words  this  experience  has  shown  by  one 
more  conspicuous  example  the  fact  that  labor  to-day 
will  get  far  better  results  by  seeking  its  own  interest 
and  advancement  through  the  advancement  of  in- 
dustry and  the  country,  than  by  trying  to  force  its 
advancement  by  fighting  for  special  class  privileges 
against,  or  irrespective  of,  the  advancement  and 
interest  of  the  rest  of  the  country. 

Just  before  the  war  ended  the  clothing  workers 
struck  for  a  forty-four-hour  week  and  a  new  system 
which  otherwise  lessened  production  per  worker 
which  would  and  did  so  cut  production  that  thirty- 
five  per  cent,  more  men  could  be  kept  at  work  and 
in  the  union. 

In  this  case,  however,  as  has  previously  been  em- 
phasized, the  strikers  were  in  a  particularly  favorable 
situation  in  that  the  demobilization  of  four  million 
soldiers  meant  at  least  for  the  next  year  a  very  large 
increase  in  the  demand  for  clothing,  and  so  for  their 
labor.     They,  therefore,  not  only  insisted  upon  a 


Inefficient  Distribution  of  Labor    69 

thirty-five  per  cent,  reduction  of  efficiency  per  worker 
in  order  that  thirty-five  per  cent,  extra  workers  could 
be  maintained  permanently  in  the  industry,  but  upon 
the  additional  demand  that  the  wages  of  all,  includ- 
ing the  thirty-five  per  cent,  of  extra  workers,  should 
be  practically  doubled. 

The  clothing  workers  won  their  strike.  But  where- 
as in  the  case  of  the  electrical  employees,  where  the 
fight  for  the  principle  of  reduced  efficiency  per  worker 
was  lost  and  the  old  standards  of  efficiency  main- 
tained, the  progress  and  prosperity  of  the  industry 
actually  resulted  in  keeping  the  full  war  quota  of 
labor  employed  at  better  than  war  wages,  in  the 
clothing  industry  not  merely  the  extra  thirty-five 
per  cent,  but  over  fifty  per  cent,  of  the  whole  industry 
was  within  six  months  out  of  a  job  and  earning  noth- 
ing. Moreover,  by  making  them  officially  clothing 
workers  the  strike  and  the  union  worked  to  keep  them 
for  months  idle  and  agitating  instead  of  going  back 
to  work  at  their  old  jobs  where  they  were  needed. 

In  the  coal  strike,  the  question  of  reducing  hours 
so  that  extra  war  workers,  who  were  not  needed  in 
the  coal  industry  under  normal  conditions  but  were 
vitally  needed  in  other  industries,  should  be  artifi- 
cially kept  in  the  coal  industry,  was  one  of  the  two 
most  prominent  and  undoubtedly  the  one  most  vital 
question  at  issue. 


70         The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

Fuel  Administrator  Garfield  has  definitely  declared 
— and  all  other  unbiased  students  of  the  coal  in- 
dustry seem  to  agree  with  him — that  the  chief  basis 
of  labor  trouble  in  the  coal  industry  was  the  fact 
that  there  are  far  more  men  in  it  than  the  industry 
needs. ' 

The  United  States  Senate  reports  show  that  for 
the  year  before  the  coal  strike  the  average  miner 
received  about  $1600  for  about  two  hundred  days, 
work.  During  this  period  it  was  shown,  however, 
that  because  of  the  number  of  miners  and  because 
wages  were  such  that  the  average  miner  could  main- 
tain his  scale  of  living  on  much  less  than  full  time,  it 
was  the  custom  in  the  industry — and  this  custom  was 
maintained  even  during  the  war  period,  when  the 
demand  for  coal  was  greatest — to  work  less,  often 
much  less,  than  full  time  in  order  that  there  might  be 
plenty  of  work  for  all  the  extra  men  in  the  industry. 
It  was  also  shown  by  this  same  Senate  report  that  the 
miner  who  worked  all  the  time  he  could  instead  of 

1  The  coal  strike  and  the  steel  strike  were  planned  at  about  the 
same  time.  Both  were  strongly  backed  by  the  American  Federation 
of  Labor.  The  chief  aim  of  the  coal  strike  was  to  keep  about  100,- 
000  more  workers  in  the  coal  industry — and  so  in  the  unions — than 
the  industry  could  possibly  use  under  normal  working  conditions. 
Hence  the  demand  for  forty-eight  hour  pay  for  a  thirty-hour  week. 
The  steel  strike  aimed  chiefly  at  such  a  reduction  of  hours  as  would 
bring  about  100,000  more  men  into  the  steel  industry — and  so  into 
the  proposed  steel  unions — than  the  steel  industry  had  ever  used 
before. 


Inefficient  Distribution  of  Labor    71 

part  time  earned  from  $2400  to  $3200  a  year  on  the 
wage  scale  before  the  strike. 

There  were  personal  ambitions  and  factional  poli- 
tics back  of  the  coal  strike,  as  will  be  shown  later, 
but  to  its  main  aims  all  leaders  agreed.  These  were 
that  in  order  that  all  the  men  in  the  industry  could 
be  kept  in  the  industry,  and  in  the  unions,  and  not 
be  forced  back  into  the  other  industries  where  they 
were  needed,  wages  should  be  raised  to  a  point  where 
the  average  miner  could  maintain  a  full  American 
scale  of  living  by  working  three  or  four  days  a  week. 
And  in  order  to  make  this  doubly  sure,  it  was  further 
demanded  that  the  maximum  week's  work  should  be 
officially  recognized  as  thirty  hours,  which  is  equal 
to  exactly  three  and  three  fourths  eight-hour  days  a 
week.  The  miners'  leaders  won  only  a  partial  victory, 
but  this  extravagantly  inefficient  condition  still 
persists  of  a  far  greater  number  of  men  than  the  in- 
dustry needs,  each  working  part  time.  Thus  not  only 
does  the  average  coal  buyer  pay  two  men's  wages 
instead  of  one  man's  wages  on  every  ton  of  coal  he 
buys,  but  there  is  a  correspondingly  lower  production 
and  higher  price  due  to  labor  shortage  in  each  other 
industry — particularly  farming — from  which  these 
men  came  but  to  which  they  have  not  gone  back. 

But  this  persistent  determination  of  the  unions  to 
keep  as  many  men  as  possible  in  the  industries  they 


12         The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

dominate,  or  want  to  dominate,  and  so  in  the  union 
to  help  in  this  domination,  not  only  obviously  adds 
immensely  to  the  cost  of  living,  but  it  is  part  of  a 
secret,  sinister  policy,  to  be  discussed  later,  which  will 
in  the  long  run,  if  it  succeeds,  be  far  more  costly  yet 
to  the  whole  American  people. 


CHAPTER  VII 

STRIKES   AND   THE   HIGH   COST   OF   LIVING 

Strikes  made  potatoes  cost  four  dollars  more — 
suits  thirty  dollars  more — rent  thirty-two  dollars 
more,  and  specifically  raised  the  prices  of  hundreds 
of  other  necessities  of  all  kinds. 

But  such  individual  and  special  facts  are  only  the 
high  lights  of  the  whole  picture — they  represent  only 
a  few  of  the  more  direct  and  obvious  costs  of  strikes 
to  you.  To  get  any  idea  of  the  whole  cost  of  strikes 
we  must  examine  the  background  of  the  strike  pic- 
ture— get  at  the  basic  general  facts  of  the  strike 
problem. 

In  1919,  3232  strikes  were  officially  reported.  Of 
these  the  United  States  Department  of  Labor  ana- 
lyzed 2395  and  found  that  in  only  this  sixty  per 
cent,  of  all  strikes  3,95041 1  strikers  lost  an  average 
of  thirty-four  days  per  strike,  which  means  a  loss  of 
134,300,000  working  days. 

Another  analysis  of  only  part  of  last  year's  strikes 
shows  57,885  days  of  striking  by  an  average  of  1640 
workers  to  each  strike,  or  a  loss  of  about  one  hun- 

73 


74         The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

dred  million  working  days.  Still  another  analysis 
shows  143,850,000  days  of  labor  lost. 

Not  one  of  these  investigations  includes  the  hours 
lost  by  all  labor  and  the  days  lost  by  part  of  labor 
while  the  strike  was  being  fomented  and  agitated 
before  it  began,  or  the  time  lost  after  the  men  began 
to  come  back.  Not  one  of  them  includes  more  than 
sixty  per  cent,  of  all  the  strikes  of  which  we  have 
record.  There  was,  therefore,  far  more  than  134,300- 
000  working  days  actually  lost  by  the  strikers  alone. 

But  practically  every  one  of  these  more  than 
3,950,000  workers,  who  themselves  lost  more  than 
134,300,000  working  days,  caused  other  workers  to 
lose  time  and  wages — in  many  instances  two  and 
three  and  five  and  ten  times  as  many  other  workers — 
in  one  instance  seven  hundred  times  as  many  other 
workers,  as  the  number  who  actually  struck. 

We  know  then,  even  though  we  haven't  the  exact 
figures,  that  industry  and  the  country  lost  in  191 9 
alone,  directly  or  indirectly  through  strikes,  literally 
hundreds  of  millions — perhaps  altogether  five  hun- 
dred million  working  days. 

Counting  only  the  134,300,000  working  days  lost, 
that  means,  at  an  average  of  six  dollars  a  day, 
$805,800,000  wages  lost. 

The  total  wages  lost  to  labor  directly  and  indirectly 
due  to  one  year's  strikes — and,  because  they  were  not 


Strikes  and  the  High  Cost  of  Living  75 

earned  and  not  spent  by  labor,  lost  to  the  business 
of  the  whole  country — totals  billions  of  dollars. 

But  these  are  only  the  first  items  in  the  high  cost 
of  strikes. 

In  the  shoe  industry  in  191 9  a  dollar's  worth  of 
labor  applied  through  tools  and  machinery  to  the  raw 
material  produced  over  seven  dollars'  worth  of  finished 
product.  A  dollar  in  the  men's  clothing  industry 
produced  three  dollars  in  finished  product.  A  dollar 
in  the  furniture  industry  produced  five  dollars'  worth 
of  finished  product.  A  dollar  in  the  cotton  industry 
produced  nearly  eight  dollars'  worth  of  product.  In 
the  coal  industry  the  rate  was  three  to  one,  and  while 
in  many  industries  it  was  much  higher,  in  few  indus- 
tries is  it  lower  than  this. 

If,  then,  we  figure  that  for  each  dollar  in  wages 
lost  only  three  dollars  was  lost  in  production,  this 
means  that  the  days  of  labor  lost  by  only  the  actual 
strikers  in  about  sixty  per  cent,  of  one  year's  strikes 
cut  that  year's  production,  at  factory  prices,  about 
two  billion  five  hundred  million  dollars. 

If  we  try  to  count  up  the  total  of  how  much  less 
production  the  whole  country  had  to  sell  and  make  a 
profit  on  and  enjoy,  because  of  all  the  time  lost  in  one 
year,  directly  and  indirectly,  through  all  strikes,  the 
figures  would  be  unbelievable. 

In  fact,  it  has  been  said  that  the  total  cost  of 


7°         The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

strikes  in  19 19  was  greater  than  the  total  cost  of  the 
war  in  191 8.  This  is  undoubtedly  a  conservative 
estimate. 

In  1918,  at  the  end  of  the  war,  the  price  level  was 
207 * — 107  points  higher  than  in  191 3. 

At  the  end  of  the  Civil  War  the  price  level  was  190 
— 102  points  higher  than  when  the  war  began;  and 
the  high  prices  were  accompanied  by  high  profits  and 
high  wages,  just  as  in  our  own  war. 

But  whereas,  by  1867,  the  second  year  after  the 
Civil  War,  prices  had  gone  down  thirty-nine  points, 
within  eighteen  months  after  the  World  War  prices, 
as  we  all  know  too  well,  had  gone  sixty-five  points 
still  further  up. 

The  primary  and  basic  and  biggest  reason  was 
strikes. 

When  the  Civil  War  ended,  our  whole  people, 
inspired  by  the  incentive  of  the  big  profits  and  high 
wages,  went  unanimously  and  whole-heartedly  to 
work.  The  result  was  that  they  started,  and  for 
years  enjoyed  the  greatest  era  of  big  production  and 
of  falling  prices,  coupled  with  continuing  high  profits 
and  high  wages,  that  this  or  any  other  country  has 
ever  before  or  since  enjoyed. 

1  Distinction  must  be  made  between  general  commodity  prices, 
here  referred  to,  and  the  prices  of  special  commodities  of  universally 
consumed  necessities,  whose  prices  go  to  make  up  what  is  generally 
referred  to  as  the  cost  of  living  (see  table,  p.  2). 


Strikes  and  the  High  Cost  of  Living  77 

At  the  end  of  the  World  War  on  the  other  hand, 
there  seemed  to  be  an  increasing  tendency  on  the  part 
of  more  and  more  of  our  producing  classes  not  to 
utilize  the  remarkable  opportunity  of  high  wages  and 
big  profits  to  produce  more,  but  rather  to  take  ad- 
vantage of  high  wages  and  big  profits  to  work  less  and 
produce  less. 

Free  traders  and  Single  Taxers,  believers  in  laissez 
faire  or  in  socialism,  or  in  any  of  the  hundred  and 
one  other  schools  of  political  philosophy,  may  dis- 
agree about  every  other  economic  law,  but  all  of 
them,  from  Adam  Smith  to  the  near  economist  of  the 
soap  box  and  the  Bolsheviki,  agree  that  wealth, 
whether  in  gold  or  in  potatoes,  or  in  anything  else, 
comes  primarily  from  the  application  of  labor  to 
resources,  and  that  the  price  of  all  wealth,  whether  in 
gold  or  in  potatoes  or  anything  else,  is  in  proportion 
to  the  amount  of  it  produced. 

To-day,  therefore,  as  in  the  period  beginning  in 
1865 — through  war  and  reconstruction  as  at  any 
other  time — in  spite  of  any  number  of  new  and  com- 
plicating circumstances,  this  fact  is  true  and  basic: 
that  we  will  have  more  things,  and  things  therefore 
will  be  cheap,  in  direct  proportion  as  more  labor  is 
applied  to  our  resources,  or  we  will  have  less  things, 
and  things  will  be  high,  in  proportion  as  we  apply 
less  labor  to  our  resources. 


78  The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  this  basic  economic  principle 
has  perhaps  never  been  more  clearly  proved  out  in 
actual  practice  than  under  the  exceptional  conditions 
during  the  Civil  War  and  after,  and  during  and  after 
our  war. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  Civil  War  plenty  of  goods 
were  being  made  to  go  round,  and  prices  were  moder- 
ate— 88 — as  compared  with  ioo  in  191 3  and  103  in 
1840.  But  during  the  war  great  numbers  of  men 
went  into  the  army.  Other  great  numbers  had  to 
make  powder  and  shells  and  special  war  supplies. 
All  this  labor  stopped  being  applied  to  the  production 
of  normal  commodities ;  less  normal  commodities  were 
produced,  and  the  prices  went  up. 

Of  course  there  was  profiteering  and  speculation 
and  inflation  during  the  Civil  War.  Undoubtedly 
there  was  relatively  more  profiteering  and  more 
speculation  and  certainly  a  greater  inflation  during 
the  Civil  War  than  there  was  during  our  war.  But 
profiteering  and  speculation  as  reasons  for  high  prices 
of  normal  commodities  are  always  only  the  little 
children  of  the  real  basic  cause — lessened  production 
of  ordinary  commodities  because  less  labor  is  applied 
to  producing  them. 

For  it  is  perfectly  plain  that  any  would-be  profiteer 
would  have  a  mighty  slim  chance  to  get  illegitimately 
high  prices  when  there  is  plenty  of  the  article  he  sells 


Strikes  and  the  High  Cost  of  Living  79 

being  produced  and  the  buyer  can  get  it  anywhere 
else  as  well  as  from  him.  Profiteering  thrives  only 
on  shortage.  The  profiteer  has  always  been  merely 
the  flea  on  the  back  of  lessened  production. 

Exactly  the  same  thing  is  true  of  speculation.  The 
speculator  knows  the  basic  economic  law  that  when 
plenty  of  goods  are  being  produced  the  price  is  bound 
to  come  down.  He  would  not  think  of  attempting  to 
hold  or  "corner"  goods  for  higher  prices  except  where 
there  is  a  decreasing  production  to  help  him  along. 
When  there  is  an  increasing  production  the  wise  specu- 
lator always  "goes  short "  and  so  helps  prices  down. 

As  for  inflation,  the  term  merely  means  that  we 
have  more  money  than  we  have  consumable  products. 
and  therefore  we  have  to  pay  more  money  to  buy 
consumable  products.  But  it  is  simple  as  A  B  C  that 
the  very  fact  that  we  have  more  money  means  in  itself 
that  we  have  relatively  less  consumable  products  and 
that  the  one  economic  way  to  equalize  the  relation 
between  money  and  consumable  products  is  to  in- 
crease production. : 

1 "  There  is  no  cure,  in  my  judgment,  for  this  increased  cost  of  liv- 
ing except  increased  production." — JudgeGary  before  United  States 
Senate  Committee. 

"  The  war  has  created  a  tremendous  void  in  materials  and  com- 
modities of  all  kinds  and  prices  are  high  by  reason  of  this  scarcity.  The 
law  of  supply  and  demand  is  as  inexorable  as  any  law  of  nature,  and 
prices  can  only  become  lower  when  the  world's  storehouse  has  again 
reached  its  normal  level." — Committee  of  Cleveland  Business  Men. 


80         The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

At  the  end  of  the  Civil  War  we  had  a  lot  of  new 
factories  and  new  railroads.  Men  had  learned  to 
work  more  efficiently  because  they  had  to  during  the 
nation's  need.  When  the  men  came  back  from  the 
army  and  from  making  war  supplies  and  applied  their 
labor  once  more  to  the  producing  of  normal  com- 
modities the  country  began  at  once  to  have  more 
normal  commodities  which  went  to  equalize  the 
previously  unequal  relation  between  commodities  and 
money — to  offset  the  "inflation" — with  the  result 
that  prices  went  down  thirty-nine  points  within  two 
years.  Also  with  the  incentive  of  high  wages  and 
big  profits  Americans  worked  harder,  and  with  the 
advantage  of  the  new  special  equipment  the  war  had 
given  them  they  produced  more  efficiently,  and  this 
harder  work  and  more  efficient  production  not  only 
helped  to  reduce  still  further  prices — or  "inflation," 
but  left  an  extra  margin  for  profits  and  wages,  as  it 
always  does,  so  that  wages  and  profits  did  not  go 
down  with  the  price. 

The  fundamental  fact  in  regard  to  high  war  prices 
and  as  to  whether,  after  the  war,  these  prices  shall 
continue  for  a  time  to  go  up  or  shall  at  once  come 
down  is  simply  this:  When  war  takes  a  certain 
proportion  of  labor  away  from  the  production  of 
normal  commodities,  less  normal  commodities  are 
produced  and  prices  go  up.    When  the  war  is  over 


Strikes  and  the  High  Cost  of  Living  81 

and  labor  goes  back  to  the  production  of  normal  com- 
modities more  of  them  are  produced  and  prices  come 
down — if  labor  does  go  back  to  producing. 

In  the  beginning  of  the  World  War,  a  tremendous 
proportion  of  men  in  Europe  and  a  certain  proportion 
of  men  in  America  stopped  applying  their  labor  to 
the  production  of  normal  commodities  to  go  into  war 
work,  so  that  there  were  less  of  our  normal  commodi- 
ties produced,  and  prices  immediately  began  to  go 
up.  When  America  went  into  the  war,  four  million 
more  men  were  taken  away  by  the  army,  and  other 
millions  by  the  production  of  special  war  material, 
from  the  production  of  normal  commodities,  and 
prices  went  up  proportionately  more  rapidly  until 
they  reach  207 — over  twice  what  they  had  been  be- 
fore this  labor  had  been  taken  from  producing  normal 
commodities. 

When  men  came  back  from  the  army  after  the 
World  War  they  had  the  same  incentive  of  high 
wages  and  high  profit  that  existed  after  the  Civil  War. 
They  found  an  almost  miraculous  increase  of  equip- 
ment, of  new  factories  and  new  machinery  and  better 
methods  which  could  be  used  to  produce  more  goods 
in  proportion  to  the  labor  applied,  so  that  prices 
could  have  come  down  and  still  left  a  big  margin  to 
keep  wages  and  profits  up,  just  as  actually  happened 
after  the  Civil  War. 

6 


82         The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

At  the  end  of  the  World  War  our  railroads  had 
unquestionably  gone  down  in  efficiency,  but  there 
was  ample  equipment  and  ample  labor  available 
after  the  war  to  bring  the  railroads  promptly  up  to 
the  standards  of  the  rest  of  American  industry. 

We  also  did  not  have  in  191 8  any  great  new  West 
to  develop,  but  we  have  a  very  prosperous  and  pro- 
gressive, instead  of  a  wasted  and  impoverished, 
South.  We  also  still  have  far  more  natural  resources 
than  we  have  either  the  labor  or  transportation  fa- 
cilities to  develop,  and  we  now  have  a  merchant 
marine  that  makes  the  resources  of  the  whole 
world  more  available  than  were  those  of  the  West 
in  1865. 

At  the  end  of  our  war  America  had  the  economic 
leadership  of  the  world  within  her  grasp.  Our  own 
stores  of  all  kinds  of  normal  commodities  were  de- 
pleted and  the  whole  American  people  with  its  war 
profits  and  high  wages  were  ready  to  buy  and  pay  for 
billions  of  dollars'  worth  more  of  these  necessities. 
The  reserve  stocks  of  the  nations  of  Europe  and  Asia 
and  South  America  had  also  been  so  diminished  or 
wiped  out  during  the  war  that  all  were  eager  to  buy 
billions  of  dollars'  worth  of  products  which  America 
alone  right  after  the  war  could  furnish.  From  being 
$3,000,000,000  in  debt  to  Europe  we  had  $10,000,- 
000,000  of  Europe's  capital  to  add  to  our  own  im- 


Strikes  and  the  High  Cost  of  Living  83 

mense  increase  of  capital  with  which  to  finance  the 
production  and  sale  of  these  commodities. 

All  this  demand  for  more  products,  all  this  capital, 
all  these  new  factories  and  machinery,  ready  or  easily 
made  ready,  to  turn  out  these  products  waited  merely 
the  return  of  labor  from  the  war  and  from  war 
industries. 

Labor  came  back  from  the  war  and  war  industries, 
but  instead  of  applying  itself  with  the  new  energy  and 
skill  we  had  learned  during  the  war  to  the  new  equip- 
ment we  had  gained  during  the  war  to  produce  the 
vast  new  quantities  of  goods  which  we  and  the  whole 
world  expected,  just  a  part  of  labor  immediately 
wasted  134,000,000  work  days  on  strikes  and  forced 
other  labor  to  waste  hundreds  of  millions  more  work 
days  because  of  strikes. 

Look  at  the  high  cost  of  strikes  from  this  point  of 
view.  The  war  made  it  necessary  to  take  the  labor 
of  some  six  million  men  away  from  being  applied 
to  the  production  of  normal  commodities.  This 
resulted  in  such  a  reduction  in  the  amount  of  normal 
commodities  produced  that  prices  went  up  one  hun- 
dred points — fifty  points  a  year.  Then  these  six 
million  men  supposedly  went  back  to  the  production 
of  normal  commodities,  but  in  the  first  year  after  the 
war,  because  of  strikes  or  labor  inefficiency — which, 
because  of  what  we  know  about  the  efficiency  of 


*4         The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

American  labor  can  only  be  laid  to  the  spirit  of  strikes 
— they  so  failed  to  produce  the  goods  the  country 
needed  that  prices  went  up  sixty  points  still  higher, 
or  more  than  they  had  in  any  year  during  the  war. 

In  other  words,  the  rise  in  prices  during  the  war 
and  the  still  further  rise  in  prices  after  the  war  were 
due  primarily  to  exactly  the  same  causes — the  fact 
that  tremendous  bodies  of  men  were  not  applying 
their  labor  to  the  production  of  normal  commodities. 
There  is  just  this  difference  in  the  situation.  Im- 
mense numbers  of  men  could  not  apply  their  labor  to 
normal  production  during  the  war  because  their 
country  needed  them.  Immense  numbers  of  men 
would  not  apply  their  labor  to  normal  production 
after  the  war  because  they  prefer,  or  were  forced  by 
their  leaders,  to  agitate  and  strike. 


CHAPTER   VIII 

WHAT  ARE  STRIKES  GAINING  TO  OFFSET  THESE  LOSSES  ? 

Mr.  Samuel  Gompers,  for  forty  years  president 
of  the  American  Federation  of  Labor,  is  undoubtedly 
in  a  position  to  defend  strikes  in  general  and  in 
particular  with  as  much  knowledge  and  ability  as 
can  be  used  for  their  defense.  In  his  famous  debate 
with  Governor  Allen  of  Kansas,  as  labor's  chosen 
advocate  on  this  subject,  he  rested  his  whole  defense 
of  strikes,  first,  on  the  inherent  right  of  a  free  man  to 
work  or  not  to  work  at  his  own  pleasure  and,  second, 
on  what  strikes  in  the  past  had  accomplished  in  doing 
away  with  child  and  woman  labor  and  in  raising  the 
standards  of  living  of  all  labor. 

Of  these  two  grounds  on  which  Mr.  Gompers 
defended  strikes,  the  first  is  a  very  popular  argument 
with  labor  leaders  to-day.  They  are  continually 
talking  about  the  fundamental  right  of  any  free 
American  citizen  to  work  or  not  to  work  at  his  own 
volition.  They  constantly  decry  loudly  as  industrial 
slavery  the  very  idea  that  any  man  should  go  to  work 
or  stop  work  at  the  mere  volition  of  some  other  man. 

85 


86         The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

Yet  iooo  B.  R.  T.  workers  reversed  the  vote  of 
2000  men  not  to  strike  and  by  that  reversal  and  by 
threats  and  intimidation  made  1 1,000  other  men  stop 
working  against  their  volition.  All  through  early 
September,  1920,  the  streets  of  Brooklyn  witnessed 
frequent  riots,  during  which  over  900  people  were 
injured,  because  the  strikers  tried  physically  to  pre- 
vent men  from  working  who  wanted  to  work.  In 
the  steel  strike  a  number  of  men  were  killed,  scores 
were  maimed,  and  thousands  intimidated  by  the 
strikers  in  order  to  prevent  men  who  wanted  to  work 
from  working.  It  is  the  commonest  knowledge  that 
there  are  few  strikes  called  in  which  a  large  propor- 
tion— often  a  large  majority  of  the  strikers  are  not 
forced  to  quit  work  against  their  will.  There  is  sel- 
dom a  strike  called  in  which  police  protection  is  not 
required  for  those  men  who  are  brave  enough  not  to 
stop  work  merely  at  the  strikers'  volition. 

For  the  modern  labor  leader  therefore  to  attempt 
to  defend  recent  strikes,  with  their  tremendous  cost 
to  the  public  and  to  labor  as  a  whole  on  a  principle 
which  he  himself  has  absolutely  repudiated  in  the 
very  calling  of  a  large  part  of  these  strikes,  is  the  most 
brazen  hypocrisy. 

But  even  in  principle,  the  theory  which  seeks  to 
justify  strikes  on  any  inherent  right  of  any  man  to 
work  or  not  to  work  at  his  own  volition  is  absolutely 


What  are  Strikes  Gaining         87 

unsound.  For  a  strike  is  never  merely  the  exercise 
of  such  a  right,  but  is  always  from  its  very  nature,  a 
conspiracy  among  many  men  to  stop  work  together 
in  order  to  injure  someone  else — and  in  an  increasing 
number  of  cases  in  order  to  injure  the  public. 

This  whole  argument  is,  in  fact,  exactly  parallel  to 
another  well-known  argument  of  our  past  economic 
history  which  labor  itself  helped  to  explode.  It 
used  continually  to  be  argued  by  certain  classes  of 
capitalists  that  any  man  has  a  right  to  sell  any  pro- 
perty that  is  his  at  any  price  he  can  get  for  it.  But 
when  any  man  conspires  with  other  men  to  fix  or 
regulate  values  so  they  can  force  others  to  pay  their 
price,  labor  agrees  with  the  rest  of  the  country  that 
this  puts  the  case  in  an  entirely  different  category. 

It  is  not  only  unsound  but  dangerous  for  labor  to 
rest  its  own  case  on  this  kind  of  logic. 

The  answer  to  Mr.  Gompers's  second  argument— 
the  extent  to  which  strikes  have  and  have  not  been 
responsible  in  the  past  for  labor's  economic  and  social 
advancement  is  emphasized  in  a  succeeding  chapter. 

But  any  theorizing  about  the  right  to  strike,  any 
discussion  of  the  good  or  bad  effects  of  strikes  under 
other  conditions  in  the  past,  is  of  course  merely 
academic. 

We  had  during  the  period  under  discussion  millions 
of  men,  not  discussing  the  theories  of  strikes  but 


88         The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

striking.  What  did  these  strikes  aim  at?  During 
this  period  when  labor  was  on  top  and  labor  leaders 
in  control  as  never  before,  there  were  three  times  as 
many  strikes  and  probably  ten  times  as  many  men 
striking  as  in  any  similar  period  in  our  history. 
What  have  been  the  results  of  these  strikes? 

We  know  very  definitely  that  this  unprecedented 
number  of  strikes  has  piled  up  a  total  of  days  of  labor 
wasted  that  runs  into  the  hundreds  of  millions  and 
has  never  before  been  approached  except  in  modern 
Russia  or  in  times  of  war  panic. 

We  know  that  the  loss  of  production  from  these 
days  of  labor  wasted,  caused  a  shortage  that  added 
tremendously  to  the  cost  of  living  for  all  of  us. 

We  know  that  the  only  possible  justification  for 
any  part  of  this  loss — the  only  way  the  public  could 
possibly  be  compensated  for  any  part  of  it — de- 
pends on  the  extent  to  which  it  might  have  been 
necessary  in  raising  the  standards  of  American 
workers  to  make  them  better  fellow-citizens  and 
more  efficient  producers  in  the  future. 

Were  these  strikes  during  this  period  when  the 
labor  leader  was  in  particular  power  and  the  present 
special  type  of  big  labor  organization  in  control,  a 
necessary  special  effort  to  raise  the  average  workers' 
living  standards  which  needed  raising  sufficiently  to 
warrant  the  cost?     What  have  they  succeeded  in 


What  are  Strikes  Gaining         89 

accomplishing  at  this  price  ?  Have  these  strikes  had 
any  other  aims  that  have  made  or  may  ultimately 
make  them  a  paying,  or  even  partially  paying,  invest- 
ment to  the  public?  If  the  public  interest  has  been 
ignored  and  the  cost  has  been  assessed  against  the 
public  to  advance  a  mere  class  interest,  has  the  class 
itself — labor  in  general — received  any  return  or  any 
prospect  of  return  commensurate  with  the  whole  cost 
or  even  the  cost  to  itself? 

The  debate  on  strikes  between  Mr.  Gompers  and 
Governor  Allen  took  place  in  the  period  when  organ- 
ized labor  was  at  the  peak  of  its  power  and  conducting 
this  greatest,  most  spectacular  strike  campaign  in 
industrial  history.  Yet  Mr.  Gompers  made  no 
reference  to  this  campaign — to  its  aims  or  its  results. 

In  spite  of  the  tremendous  obvious  costs  and  losses 
which  stand  so  conspicuously  on  the  debit  side  of  the 
balance  sheet,  no  other  leader  of  the  great  labor 
organizations  which  conducted  this  campaign  has 
offered  any  definite  specific  statement  as  to  either 
aims  or  results. 

Labor  has  of  course  assumed  to  assign  the  motives 
and  aims  of  each  individual  strike  in  its  statement  of 
the  cause  of  this  strike.  There  were,  on  this  basis, 
according  to  the  Department  of  Labor  reports, 
twenty-three  reasons  or  combinations  of  reasons  for 
which  strikes  were  called  in  1919.     These  reasons, 


90         The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

however,  were  invariably  stated  in  the  most  gen- 
eral terms,  such  as  "more  wages" — "recognition  of 
union" — "better  working  conditions,"  etc. 

Such  terms  of  course  mean  entirely  different 
things  in  different  cases.  "Increase  in  wages"  may 
in  one  case  mean  a  moderate  and  entirely  justifiable 
demand,  and  in  another  case,  such  as  that  of  the 
California  fishermen,  a  hold-up  for  five  hundred 
per  cent,  increase  merely  because  the  workers  or 
their  leaders  think  they  have  their  employers  in 
a  hole. 

A  demand  for  shorter  working  hours  may  be 
entirely  legitimate,  or  it  may,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
Bituminous  Coal  Miners'  Union,  represent  an  encour- 
agement of  shiftlessness  in  order  that  an  illegitimate 
number  of  men  may  be  kept  working  and  so  paying 
dues  into  the  union. 

It  is  of  course  true  of  strikes,  as  of  other  facts 
involving  human  nature,  that  motives  and  aims  are 
seldom  single  and  unmixed.  The  reasons  officially 
assigned  for  strikes  do  not  give,  and  seldom  even  hint 
at,  indirect  motives  and  aims  which  are  frequently  far 
the  most  important.  It  is  of  course  obvious  that  in 
graft  and  blackmail  strikes,  whatever  aim  is  officially 
assigned  has  little  to  do  with  the  real  aim  and  is  gener- 
ally as  far  away  from  it  as  possible.  The  more  we 
go  into  the  strike  question  the  more  obvious  it  be- 


What  are  Strikes  Gaining         91 

comes  that  the  same  thing  is  true  of  many  classes 
of  strikes. ' 

It  is  even  more  impossible  to  get  any  adequate 
idea  of  the  results  of  strikes  from  official  reports  of 
results  which  are  almost  invariably  stated  in  terms  of 
"won,"  "lost,"  or  "compromised,"  and  at  most  in 
terms  of  the  resulting  wage  raises,  hour  reductions, 
etc.  Such  statements  of  results  being  merely  in 
terms  of  the  officially  stated  aims  of  the  strike  make 
no  reference  to  the  strike's  success  or  failure  as  re- 
gards its  secondary  or  indirect,  or  as  is  often  the  case, 
its  very  different  real  aims. 

Moreover,  it  was  conspicuously  obvious  that  after- 
the-war  unrest,  the  shortage  of  labor,  dissatisfaction 
with  the  high  cost  of  living,  the  openly  admitted 
ambitions  of  organized  labor,  radicalism's  "boring 
from  within"  policy,  were  all  important  factors  which 
ran  through  the  whole  after- the- war  strike  situation. 
Also  both  organized  labor,  which  is  largely  centrally 
controlled,  and  radicalism,  have  admitted  general 
strike  policies  of  which  individual  strikes  have  been 
largely  mere  expressions. 

It  is  obvious,  therefore,  that  it  is  not  only  impos- 

1  As  a  matter  of  law  unless  a  strike  is  for  the  purpose  of  improv- 
ing wages,  hours,  or  other  working  conditions,  it  is  liable  to  be  judged 
a  criminal  conspiracy  just  as  a  conspiracy  by  anybody  else  to  do 
injury  is  criminal.  Labor  leaders  who  know  the  law  therefore  would 
always  be  careful  in  assigning  such  a  reason  for  any  strike. 


92  The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

sible  to  get  any  adequate  conceptions  of  the  motives 
and  results  of  after-the-war  strikes  from  any  study 
of  the  statistics  of  individual  strikes  but  from  the  very 
nature  of  the  case,  it  is  necessary  to  study  the  dif- 
ferent manifestations  of  this  strike  epidemic  in  the 
large  in  order  to  get  any  real  answer  to  the  question 
which  labor  itself  has  so  conspicuously  refused  to 
answer,  in  regard  to  their  aims,  motives,  and  results. 


CHAPTER   IX 

OUTLAW    STRIKES — MANIA    STRIKES — GRAFT    STRIKES 

Of  the  3,950,000  workers  who  went  on  strike  in 
1919, 1,053,256  struck  for  reasons  which  labor  officials 
themselves  refused  to  recognize  and  otherwise  con- 
demned as  unwarranted. * 

On  August  30,  1920,  the  front  pages  of  all  the  news- 
papers contained  an  announcement  that  175,000  hard- 
coal  miners  had  sent  a  three-day  ultimatum  to 
President  Wilson,  threatening  a  strike  in  defiance  of 
their  own  officers,  who  did  not  believe  such  a  strike 
was  warranted. 

On  the  same  front  pages  of  the  same  papers  was 
another  announcement  of  the  actual  tying  up  of  the 
principal  transportation  systems  of  Brooklyn  that 
was  insisted  on  and  perpetrated  against  the  orders 
and  threats  of  the  union's  own  officials,  who  said  a 
strike  was  not  warranted  and  would  be  defeated. 

The  printers'  strike  in  New  York,  which  cut  the 
wages  of  one  million  five  hundred  thousand  other 
men,  was  condemned  by  the  printers'  own  interna- 
tional union  as  entirely  unwarranted. 

1  U.  S.  Dept.  of  Labor  Review,  vol.  x,  No.  6,  pages  199  to  207. 

93 


94         The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

The  whole  series  of  railroad  strikes  in  the  spring  of 
1920,  which  cost  the  public  more  than  the  coal  strike 
itself,  were  popularly  known  as  "outlaw  strikes," 
because  they  were  condemned  as  unjustified  and 
combated  as  much  by  the  officials  of  labor  as  by  the 
employers  themselves. 

All  through  July  and  August,  1920,  soft -coal  miners, 
principally  in  Illinois  and  Indiana,  but  more  or  less 
all  through  the  country,  struck  in  direct  violation  of 
the  agreement  that  ended  the  big  coal  strike  of  last 
winter. 

The  majority  of  their  own  officers  said  these 
strikes  were  wrong  and  unjustified.  The  leaders  of 
the  dock  workers  who  struck  in  August  hastened  to 
tell  the  public  the  men  were  wrong  and  shouldn't 
have  struck.  In  fact,  a  conspicuous  proportion  of  the 
strikes  that  came  to  public  attention  during  August 
seemed  to  have  been  condemned  by  a  large  part  and 
often  by  a  majority  of  labor  itself  as  being  without 
adequate  justification.  And  the  October,  19 19, 
strikes,  of  which  a  special  record  happens  to  have 
been  kept,  is  even  worse,  for  here  out  of  seventy 
strikes  only  eight  were  officially  sanctioned  even  by 
labor  itself  as  being  justified. 

The  first  conspicuous  fact  then,  in  regard  to  "what 
these  strikes  gained  to  offset  their  tremendous  cost," 
js  that  twenty-five  per  cent,   of  all  these  strikes, 


Outlaw,  Mania,  and  Graft  Strikes  95 

involving  over  one  million  workers  were  admitted 
by  labor  leaders  not  to  have  achieved,  in  most  cases 
not  even  to  have  aimed  at,  any  result  that  could 
warrant  their  cost. 

On  August  27,  1920,  three  thousand  five  hundred 
American  longshoremen  went  on  strike  and  refused 
to  load  American  vessels — even  vessels  carrying 
provisions  to  American  troops  on  the  Rhine — because 
the  English  government  had  arrested  an  Irish  po- 
litical criminal. 

On  August  1st,  all  the  printers  in  Manila  went  on 
strike  because  of  one  political  editorial  in  one  news- 
paper in  favor  of  American  government  in  the 
Philippines. 

On  July  2 1  st,  nearly  a  hundred  thousand  Irishmen 
went  on  strike  because  an  American  court  sent 
Larkin,  an  American  citizen,  to  jail  for  a  crime 
committed  in  America. 

During  August  over  a  dozen  groups  of  workmen 
went  on  strike  because  of  the  war  between  Russia 
and  Poland — part  of  them  because  they  were  afraid 
the  government  might  help  or  encourage  one  or  the 
other  of  these  foreign  combatants,  part  because  they 
were  afraid  their  government  might  not  help  or 
encourage  one  or  the  other  of  these  foreign  combat- 
ants. 

In  August  a  group  of  American  marine  workers 


96         The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

went  on  strike  because  an  English  official  would  not 
let  an  Australian  Archbishop  go  to  Ireland.  Another 
group  of  dock  workers,  seamen,  and  cooks  struck 
because  this  same  Archbishop  was  allowed  to  get  on 
a  boat  to  try  to  get  to  Ireland. 

On  August  31st,  when  five  women  appeared  on 
certain  New  York  docks  waving  green  flags  and 
haranguing  the  workers  to  strike  till  the  British 
government  should  release  the  Lord  Mayor  of  Cork 
from  prison,  three  thousand  men  of  all  races,  most 
of  them  supposed  to  be  American  citizens,  stopped 
loading  boats — chiefly  American  boats.  No  man  in 
his  sane  mind,  if  he  stopped  to  think  about  it,  could 
believe  that  such  an  act  could  change  the  course  of 
English  law  any  more  than  Henry  Ford's  slogan, 
"getting  the  boys  out  of  the  trenches  before  Christ- 
mas," could  stop  the  World  War.  And  in  any  event 
why  American  shipping  should  be  penalized,  Ameri- 
can beef  cargoes  be  allowed  to  spoil,  and  the  American 
people  be  forced  by  American  workmen  into  paying 
the  cost  of  a  strike  in  such  a  cause,  are  equally  beyond 
the  average  man's  imagination. 

Of  course,  most  of  these  workers  saw  the  incon- 
gruity of  such  a  situation  in  a  few  days,  and  went 
back  to  work,  and  the  strike  cost  only  perhaps  fifty 
thousand  dollars — a  mere  bagatelle  as  we  count  costs 
to-day.     But  the  point  is,  there  were  during  this 


Outlaw,  Mania,  and  Graft  Strikes  97 

period  literally  hundreds  of  strikes  equally  footless 
and  resultless — for  Ireland  or  Russia  or  Poland  or 
Philippine  independence  or  because  this  or  that  or 
the  other  man,  generally  a  criminal,  was  or  was  not 
treated  this,  that,  or  the  other  way — whose  sum  total 
added  a  tremendous  item  to  the  cost  of  living  and 
which  altogether  constitute  a  second  great  class  of 
strikes  that  neither  aimed  at  or  resulted  in  any  real 
benefit  to  anybody. 

One  of  the  most  serious  clothing  strikes  in  Chicago 
in  1 919  was  called  because  the  manufacturers  refused 
to  pay  a  huge  blackmail  to  certain  union  officials  for 
not  calling  the  strikes. 

A  few  years  as  a  labor  leader  made  Brindel,  the 
former  drug  clerk,  a  "millionaire." 

In  the  summer  of  1920,  the  Chicago  newspapers 
announced  the  retirement  of  a  notorious  local  labor 
leader  who  had  begun  life  as  an  ordinary  workman, 
but  who,  in  twenty  years  as  a  labor  politican  had 
acquired,  in  addition  to  his  other  wealth,  real  estate 
with  an  assessed  value  of  over  a  million  dollars. 

The  case  of  the  notorious  "Umbrella  Mike,"  boss 
of  an  electrical  workers'  union,  who  testified  that  he 
had  saved  $350,000  out  of  a  salary  of  $50  a  week  in 
six  years  is  well  known.  This  phenomenal  ability  to 
save  money  did  not,  however,  keep  the  jury  from 
sending  him  to  jail. 


98         The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

Everybody  on  the  inside  has  long  known  that 
because  many  classes  of  labor  have  always  seemed 
willing  to  follow  their  leaders  and  strike  for  only  the 
flimsiest  of  reasons,  a  large  number  of  petty  strikes 
have  always  been  called  because  bribes  are  not  paid, 
or  not  enough  bribes  are  paid,  to  prevent  such  strikes. 

But  the  strike  epidemic  which  followed  the  war, 
and  which  seemed  to  innoculate  almost  all  labor  with 
this  willingness  to  strike  for  the  flimsiest  of  reasons, 
together  with  the  immense  increases  in  wages  and 
prices  which  created  an  unparalleled  margin  for  graft, 
unquestionably  multiplied  this  use  of  strikes  as 
weapons  of  graft  and  blackmail,  extended  this  use 
of  strikes  into  many  new  trades  and  industries  and 
advanced  such  operations  from  the  petty  scale  of 
former  days  to  a  scale  on  which  the  sum  total  of 
expensiveness  ran  very  high. 

Moreover,  the  Lockwood  investigation  has  con- 
spicuously demonstrated  that  after- the-war extortion, 
graft,  and  blackmail  strikes  were  not  only  on  a  far 
larger,  wider  scale  but  it  has  given  us  a  new  idea  of 
the  multifarious  ways  in  which  the  strike  can  be 
used  as  a  weapon  of  blackmail,  all  of  which  are  ex- 
pensive to  the  public.  Brindel,  the  chief  union  labor 
pirate  in  this  particular  investigation,  sold  the  privi- 
lege of  working  as  a  skilled,  high  paid  union  laborer 
to  any  barber  or  bootblack  or  other  itinerant  work- 


Outlaw,  Mania,  and  Graft  Strikes  99 

man  for  twenty-five  dollars  and  forced  the  employer 
to  keep  such  men  at  work  irrespective  of  the  way  they 
botched  or  slowed-up  the  job,  on  threat  of  strike. 
He  collected  ten  dollars  apiece  from  union  members 
for  the  privilege  of  working,  and  then  charged  wages 
and  a  half  to  employers — of  which  he  pocketed  the 
half — for  the  privilege  of  having  these  men  work  for 
them. 

Through  his  ability,  because  of  the  willingness 
of  the  union  members  to  follow  him  blindly,  to  say 
that  any  given  piece  of  construction  could  or  could 
not  be  done,  he  frequently  demanded  a  "fifty-fifty" 
division  with  contractors  on  the  whole  profits  of  a 
job. 

With  the  inside  workings  of  this  one  case  thus 
open  before  us,  scores  of  other  labor  situations,  not 
only  in  this  but  in  other  industries  of  which  we  could 
only  suspect  the  causes  because  of  the  results,  become 
obvious. 

Moreover,  the  fact  that  Brindel,  in  spite  of  what 
was  already  publicly  shown,  not  only  as  to  his  black- 
mailing and  grafting  from  the  public  but  as  to  his 
blackmailing  and  grafting  from  labor  itself,  was  not, 
as  part  of  labor  demanded,  at  once  expelled  from  the 
American  Federation  of  Labor,  is  in  itself  eloquent 
as  to  how  widespread  and  deep-rooted  such  methods 
must  be  throughout  organized  labor  in  general,  that 


ioo        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

organized  labor  either   chooses   to,   or  must,   thus 
publicly  countenance  such  a  flagrant  case. ' 

It  is  impossible  to  say  with  any  certainty  how  big 
a  proportion  of  after-the-war  strikes,  mania  strikes, 
and  graft  strikes  constitute,  for  it  is  obvious  that  in 
assigning  official  reasons  for  such  strikes  the  reason 
assigned  was  seldom  the  true  one.     But  if  outlaw 
strikes — which  were  in  general  radically  led  strikes 
in  open  rebellion  against  the  official  labor  leaders — 
contributed  over  twenty-five  per  cent,  of  all  strikes, 
it  is  certainly  reasonable  to  believe,  both  from  obser- 
vation and  the  nature  of  the  case,  that  mania  or 
graft  strikes  constituted  an  equal  proportion  of  all 
strikes.    This  means  that  roughly  some  fifty  per  cent, 
of  all  after-the-war  strikes  must  at  once  be  written 
off  as  strikes  which  neither  gained  anything  for  any- 
body or  seriously  attempted  to  gain  anything  for 
anybody — except   perhaps  for  certain   professional 
labor  leaders — to  offset  their  tremendous  cost. 

Moreover  modern  organized  labor  and  its  official 
leaders  must  take  full  responsibility  for  such  strikes 
even  if  they  have  not  themselves  specifically  sanc- 
tioned the  particular  strike,  and  even  where  such 

1  Since  this  was  written  it  appears  that  even  as  a  convicted  grafter 
on  both  labor  and  the  public,  Brindel  was  not  only  not  expelled  from 
organized  labor  but  that  he  has  not  even  been  removed  from  leader- 
ship. Nor  does  official  organized  labor  seem  anything  but  resentful 
of  the  fact  that  he  has  now  to  exercise  that  leadership  from  Sing  Sing. 


Outlaw,  Mania,  and  Graft  Strikes  101 

strikes  are  called  by  insubordinate  minorities  against 
their  own  leadership  and  were  therefore  specifically 
"outlawed"  by  them.  For  all  such  strikes  merely 
respresent  the  logical  results  of  their  own  constant 
glorification — for  their  own  purposes — of  strikes  and 
the  unrestricted  use  of  the  strikes  weapon.  All  such 
strikes  are  the  blood  offspring — whether  legitimate  or 
not — of  their  own  theories  come  home  to  roost. 


CHAPTER   X 

STRIKES  FOR  HIGHER   PAY  AND  SHORTER  HOURS 

Of  all  strikes  in  19 19,  according  to  United  States 
Labor  Department  reports,  30.7  per  cent,  had  as 
their  assigned  reason  the  demand  for  higher  wages — 

3.2  per  cent,  the  demand  for  shorter  hours — and 

7.3  per  cent,  the  demand  for  higher  wages  and  shorter 
hours.     See  footnotes  pages  91  and  93. 

While  these  figures  show  a  marked  falling  off  in 
the  proportion  of  strikes  for  these  causes,  neverthe- 
less, because  they  are  still  the  most  important  single 
group  of  reasons  assigned  for  calling  strikes,  and 
particularly  because  of  the  sentimental  and  social 
issues  they  involve,  this  class  of  strikes  deserves  very 
special  consideration. 

Labor  has  always  preached  and  demanded  higher 
wages  and  shorter  hours  on  the  humanitarian  and 
social  grounds  of  giving  the  worker  means  and  leisure 
for  greater  physical  and  mental  development  for 
himself  and  his  family.  There  is  no  question  that 
sufficient  money  and  leisure  for  self -improvement, 
for  better  living  conditions,  and  for  education,  if  so 


Higher  Pay  and  Shorter  Hours   103 

used,  tend  not  only  to  make  more  efficient  workers 
but  also  better  Americans  and  so  to  raise  both  the 
industrial  and  social  standards  of  the  whole  country 
in  which  we  must  all  of  us  work  and  live.  They  there- 
fore represent  ideals  that  appeal,  and  should  appeal, 
strongly  to  American  public  opinion. 

But  both  labor  and  the  public  have  often  failed  to 
distinguish  between  one  possible  way  of  achieving 
an  ideal  and  the  ideal  itself. 

The  ideal  of  physical  improvement  for  instance, 
is  actually  acquired  chiefly  in  gymnasiums,  bowling 
alleys,  baseball  fields,  tennis  courts,  children's  play 
grounds. 

Better  living  conditions  can  become  practical 
realities  only  through  better  houses,  bathtubs,  elec- 
tric lights,  bigger  yards,  and  gardens.  Mental  im- 
provement requires  schools,  reading  rooms,  study 
classes. 

Mere  higher  wages  and  mere  shorter  hours  are 
often  prone,  as  we  have  seen  plainly  in  the  last  two 
years,  to  lead  to  reckless  over-spending  and  idleness 
and  discontent,  in  other  words  to  the  very  opposite 
of  self-improvement  and  better  living  conditions, 
unless  the  material  basis  for  better  living  conditions 
and  self-improvement  is  also  worked  out  and  made 
available. 

It  is  notorious  that  the  homes  and  communities 


104        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

adjacent  to  factories  and  in  which  the  workers  live, 
when  left  to  develop  in  the  ordinary  way,  have  been 
conspicuously  lacking  in  this  necessary  material 
equipment  for  the  practical  realization  of  these  ideals 
which  labor  so  consistently  preaches. 

The  American  Federation  of  Labor  and  its  subsid- 
iaries have  collected  hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars 
from  the  workers.  Yet  as  far  as  is  known  it  has 
never  reinvested  one  cent,  of  these  hundreds  of  mil- 
lions of  dollars  of  the  workers'  own  money  in  any  of 
the  physical  equipment  that  is  absolutely  necessary 
to  realize  its  own  theories  as  to  the  workers'  self 
improvement. 

An  employer,  on  the  other  hand,  as  long  ago  as 
the  eighties,  built  to  order,  entirely  for  his  workers' 
benefit  the  town  of  Pullman,  Illinois,  which  for  a 
generation  was  a  model  of  superior  living  conditions 
famous  throughout  the  world.  An  employer  built  the 
city  of  Gary,  Indiana,  and  worked  out  and  paid  for, 
for  its  workers  and  their  families,  the  Gary  system 
of  education  which  has  been  copied  by  hundreds  of 
communities  including  New  York  City.  A  group  of 
employers  have  more  recently  created  in  Georgia,  a 
community  which  offers  their  workers  living  condi- 
tions and  opportunities  and  encouragement  for  self- 
improvement  that  include  every  practical  ideal 
which  the  world's  most  advanced  sociologists  could 


Higher  Pay  and  Shorter  Hours   105 

suggest.  The  United  States  Steel  Corporation  has 
built  entirely  with  its  own  money  for  the  free  use  of 
its  workers  and  their  families  45  schools,  19  clubs, 
131  playgrounds,  96  athletic  fields,  107  tennis  courts, 
and  has  spent  for  these  and  other  practical  contribu- 
tions to  the  employees'  self -improvement  a  total 
of  $80,000,000.  And  these  are  merely  striking  ex- 
amples of  the  necessary  material  contributions  that 
thousands  of  employers  have  made  at  a  cost  that  has 
run  into  hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars  for  the  prac- 
tical realization  of  exactly  the  same  ideals  which  labor 
leaders  claim  to  be  fighting  for  in  their  fight  for  higher 
wages  and  shorter  hours. 

Again  labor  and  the  public  have  often  overlooked 
another  vital  fact  in  the  whole  situation,  namely, 
that  while  it  is  very  easy  to  stand  for  and  preach 
higher  wages  and  shorter  hours  or  any  other  ideal,  it 
is  often  an  entirely  different  matter  to  think  out  and 
work  out  the  necessary  practical  ways  and  means  of 
achieving  that  ideal. 

Lenine  and  Trotsky  preached  wonderfully  about  the 
ideal  of  freeing  and  raising  150,000,000  down-trodden 
people — but  overlooked  the  practical  question  of  ways 
and  means. 

American  industry  has  already  gone  far  in  con- 
tributing to  labor's  social  and  material  advancement 
through  paying  good  wages  for  a  moderate  working 


106        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

day.  Labor  itself  has  done  very  much  toward 
getting  these  higher  wages  and  shorter  hours  by 
preaching  and  fighting  for  them.  But  no  adequate 
interpretation  of  labor's  past  progress — no  theory  or 
opinion  as  to  future  progress  towards  higher  wages  or 
shorter  hours  is  valuable  unless  it  includes  a  clear 
understanding  that  past  progress  has  depended  and 
future  progress  must  depend,  not  only  on  having 
this  ideal  but  on  thinking  out  and  working  out 
practical  ways  and  means  for  making  this  ideal  pos- 
sible of  realization. 

In  1900  a  few  thousand  automobiles  were  sold  at 
an  average  price  of  $3000.  In  19 16  the  average 
automobile  cost  $500,  and  2,000,000  were  sold.  Take 
safety  pins  or  typewriters,  soaps  or  sewing  machines, 
electric  lights  or  cotton  goods,  phonographs  or  any 
of  the  thousand  and  one  other  products  on  whose 
combined  production  the  great  bulk  of  American 
industry  is  built,  and  the  same  principle  holds  true, 
namely,  that  development  has  come  about  chiefly  in 
proportion  as  a  constantly  increasing  efficiency  of 
quantity  production  has  encouraged  a  constantly 
increasing  volume  of  sales  by  making  possible  a 
constantly  decreasing  selling  price — or  at  least 
relative  selling  price. 

If  the  frequent  wage  increases  which  have  been 
granted  in  the  past  had  had  to  mean  a  corresponding 


Higher  Pay  and  Shorter  Hours  107 

permanent  addition  to  production  costs,  and  so  to 
selling  price — if  past  decreases  in  hours  of  work  had 
had  to  mean  a  corresponding  decrease  in  production, 
they  would  have  worked  against  and  handicapped 
the  whole  progress  of  industry.  But  this  has  not 
been  the  case.  On  the  contrary,  permanent  increases 
in  wages  and  decrease  in  working  hours  have  come 
chiefly  because  ways  and  means  have  been  thought 
out  and  worked  out — generally  in  the  form  of  im- 
provements in  machinery,  materials  or  methods — for 
creating  a  permanent  extra  margin  of  production  out 
of  which  it  was  possible  to  pay  these  extra  wages  and 
make  up  for  these  shorter  working  hours. 

Where  such  a  margin  of  profit  exists  or  can  be 
created,  or  conditions  can  be  otherwise  brought  about 
to  pay  higher  wages  or  permit  shorter  hours,  strikes 
for  higher  wages  and  shorter  hours  can  be  judged 
solely  on  the  basis  of  the  reasonableness  and  justice 
of  the  demand  itself.  But  it  is  equally  true  that 
where  conditions  are  such,  that  no  such  margin  exists 
or  seems  possible  of  being  created,  or  where  otherwise 
ways  and  means  cannot  be  found  for  meeting  de- 
mands for  higher  wages  and  shorter  hours,  or  for 
meeting  them  without  seriously  retarding  the  whole 
industry,  strikes  to  enforce  such  demands  cannot  be 
judged  merely  on  the  abstract  justice  of  the  demands 
themselves. 


108        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

During  the  war  and  for  the  first  year  and  a  half 
after  the  war,  conditions  were  such  that  almost  any 
manufacturer  could  easily  sell  all  that  he  could  make 
at  any  price  he  wanted  to  ask.  This  coupled  with 
the  great  shortage  of  labor,  made  it  often  at  least 
temporarily  profitable  for  employers  to  pay  any  wage 
that  was  demanded.  As  a  matter  of  fact — as  will  be 
emphasized  in  Chapter  XII,  this  very  willingness  of 
employers  in  many  industries  during  this  period  to 
meet  almost  any  demands  for  higher  wages  and 
shorter  hours,  irrespective  of  their  effect  on  the  future 
of  the  industry,  was  one  of  the  chief  causes  of  the 
disorganization,  unemployment  and  wage  reductions 
in  these  same  industries  a  year  later. 

That  wages  were  actually  already  so  high,  and 
working  hours  so  reduced,  during  the  great  strike 
period  after  the  war  that  they  had  in  general  ceased 
to  be  a  real  or  at  least  a  legitimate  reason  for  strikes 
is  the  commonest  knowledge. 

This  does  not  of  course  mean  that  labor  leaders  did 
not  continue  to  talk  higher  wages  to  their  followers 
and  to  make  use  of  many  ingenious  devices  to  try  to 
argue  the  need  of  higher  wages  to  the  public. ' 

1  Mr.  Samuel  Gompers  in  attempting  to  answer  the  argument  of 
the  present  volume  asserts  that  the  after-the-war  strikes  were  ne- 
cessary to  keep  wages  from  being  out-distanced  by  the  cost  of  living. 
He  advances  no  figures  or  facts  to  back  his  mere  assertion  and  ig- 
nores the  figures  stated  herein. 


Higher  Pay  and  Shorter  Hours   109 

For  instance,  in  spite  of  the  hundred  thousand  extra 
men  in  the  industry  which  kept  the  average  miner 
from  working  more  than  part  time,  the  average  wage 
actually  received  by  all  coal  miners  including  the 
poorest  paid  assistants  was  $1633  a  year.  With  this 
fact  a  matter  of  public  record,  through  the  Senate 
Investigation,  it  obviously  called  for  much  ingenuity 
on  the  part  of  union  leaders  at  the  time  of  the  19 19 
coal  strike  to  argue  convincingly  the  need  of  a  sixty 
per  cent,  raise.  One  of  the  subterfuges  they  resorted 
to,  to  thus  make  plausible  such  a  demand,  was  to 
borrow  a  certain  economist's  figures  showing  that  it 
required  $2200  to  maintain  adequately  a  family  of 
five  in  New  York  City — where  minimum  rent  was  $45 
instead  of  $7  a  month  as  in  the  coal  mine  districts, 
and  where  many  other  costs  differed  in  proportion — 
and  carefully  concealing  the  fact  that  this  estimate 
was  made  only  on  a  basis  of  New  York  City  prices, 
attempt  to  make  the  public  believe  that  a  prominent 
economist  had  estimated  that  it  required  $2200  for  a 
coal  miner  to  maintain  his  family  in  a  decent  scale  of 
living.  Many  other  very  limited  studies  as  to  wage 
conditions  and  wage  raises  were  similarly  seized  on 
and  entirely  misused  by  applying  them  to  conditions 
to  which  they  did  not  at  all  apply. 

All  such  juggling  of  statistics  also  attempted  fur- 
ther to  deceive  the  public  by  comparing  estimated 


no        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

cost  of  supporting  a  family  with  the  income  of  only 
one  member  of  a  family  whereas  it  is  a  matter  of 
government  record  for  the  whole  country  that  there 
are  1.82  wage  earners  per  family. l  In  other  words  in 
eighty-two  per  cent,  or  over  four  fifths  of  all  families 
a  father  or  unmarried  brother  or  sister  or  grown  son 
or  daughter  also  contributes  to  the  family  income. 

Moreover,  many  labor  leaders  are  still  trying  to 
excuse  their  part  in  the  strike  epidemic  and  in  its 
results  by  insisting,  on  the  basis  of  many  such  limited 
studies,  that  the  public  was  all  along  entirely  wrong 
about  labor's  high  wages  during  the  war  and  after- 
ward, that  on  the  contrary,  because  of  the  increased 
cost  of  living,  labor's  wages  were  actually  much  lower 
than  before  the  war,  and  that  their  strikes  were 
simply  to  make  labor's  wages  keep  pace  with  the 
advanced  cost  of  living. 

The  ridiculousness  of  any  such  general  contention 
can  fortunately,  however,  be  definitely  shown.  The 
United  States  Industrial  Census  which  appeared  two 
years  before  the  war  gave  the  total  number  employed 
and  total  wages  paid  in  a  big  proportion  of  all  Amer- 
ican Industries  for  the  year  1910.  By  dividing  the 
total  number  employed  into  the  total  of  wages  paid 
we  find  that  the  average  wage  paid  in  all  American 

1 U.  S.  Census,  vol.  iv.,  pp.  30-31,  shows  1.907  wage  earners  per 
industrial  family. 


Higher  Pay  and  Shorter  Hours  i  1 i 

industry  was  about  $560  for  that  year — which  figure 
was  widely  quoted  and  accepted  at  that  time. 

In  1912,  Dr.  Frank  H.  Straightoff  of  Columbia 
University  gathered  and  analyzed  all  available 
figures  as  to  average  wages.  His  figures  included  the 
average  earnings  of  19,688,000  out  of  a  total  of  26,- 
000,000  adult  males  in  the  whole  country.  He  shows 
that  of  these  19,688,000  male  workers,  64.8  per  cent, 
received  less  than  $600  annual  wage  and  27  per  cent, 
between  $600  and  $1000  annual  wage.  If  we  esti- 
mate the  average  wage  of  the  27  per  cent,  who  received 
between  $600  and  $1000  as  $900  a  year,  which  is  ob- 
viously high,  and  place  the  average  wage  of  the  64.8 
per  cent,  who  received  less  than  $600  a  year  at  $550, 
which  is  obviously  fair,  we  find  that  the  average 
wage  of  some  19,000,000  men  workers  in  19 12  was 
about  $650  a  year. 

A  study  by  the  United  States  Commission  of  Labor 
of  55  industrial  occupations  at  about  the  same  time, 
shows  that  in  11  occupations  studied,  no  workers 
received  as  much  as  $800  a  year,  and  that  in  the 
whole  55  occupations  studied,  the  average  annual 
earning  was  only  slightly  above  $600. 

Again  we  know  from  an  investigation  made  by  the 
New  York  State  Bureau  of  Municipal  Information 
that  the  wage  of  all  ordinary  labor  averaged  less  than 
$2  a  day,  or  under  $600  a  full  year,  in  fifteen  leading 


ii2        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

New  York  cities  even  in  October,  191 5.  And  we 
know  from  "Greater  New  York"  statistics  that  the 
average  of  all  industrial  wages  in  New  York  City  was 
$653.12  per  year  in  19 14. 

In  other  words  no  special  statistics  which  apply 
only  in  special  cases,  and  often  only  express  part  of 
the  facts  in  those  cases,  can  controvert  the  general 
facts  that  throughout  the  country  the  average 
worker's  wage  before  the  war  was  only  very  slightly 
above  $600  a  year — that  between  1 9 1 3  and  1 9 1 9,  prices 
in  general  went  up  about  107  per  cent,  and  most  of  the 
necessities  on  which  the  actual  cost  of  living  is  based 
had  only  gone  up  60  to  80  per  cent. *  that,  therefore, 
average  wages  would  have  had  to  go  up  to  a  little 
over  $1000  a  year  to  keep  pace  with  the  cost  of  living. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  in  the  steel  industry 
the  lowest  paid  group  of  workers  were  by  19 19 
receiving  over  $1400  a  year.  In  the  coal  industry  the 
average  worker  was  receiving  $1633  a  year  for  work- 
ing about  two  thirds  of  the  time;  and  in  a  hundred 
and  one  other  industries  the  wage  of  common  labor 
had  gone  to  $6  a  day — three  times  what  it  was  before 
the  war.  The  dock  workers  of  the  Clyde,  Mallory, 
and  Old  Dominion  Lines — negroes  in  the  South  and 
foreigners  in  the  North — were  getting  $35  a  week — 
three  times  what  the  average  worker  throughout  the 

'See  table  page  2. 


Higher  Pay  and  Shorter  Hours   113 

country  got  before  the  war  and  they  struck,  ai  the 
tremendous  cost  to  the  public  already  emphasized, 
for  $44  for  a  44-hour  week  or  over  four  times  what 
the  average  American  worker  received  before  the  war. 

In  short  the  labor  leaders'  frequent  claims  to  the 
public  that  the  great  after-the-war  strike  epidemic 
was  necessary  to  bring  general  wages  up  to  a  level 
with  the  increased  cost  of  living  are  the  sheerest 
hypocrisy. 

That  all  such  arguments  to  the  public  in  regard  to 
wages  were  mere  hypocrisy  is  further  borne  out  by  the 
fact  that  these  same  leaders  had  already  at  that  time 
begun  in  their  own  circles  to  advance  the  argument — 
and  two  prominent  labor  leaders  have  even  advanced 
it  in  public  print — that  they,  the  labor  leaders,  were 
put  on  the  necessity  of  beginning  to  advocate  govern- 
ment ownership,  industrial  co-management  and  other 
such  radical  programs  in  order  to  continue  to  justify 
their  leadership,  because  wages  and  hours  had  al- 
ready become  so  satisfactory  that  little  more  could 
be  hoped  for  along  this  line. x 

It  is  obvious  therefore  that  the  40.7  per  cent,  of  all 
strikes  during  19 19  which  alleged  as  their  cause  the 
demand  for  higher  wages  or  shorter  hours  or  both 
were  chiefly  of  three  kinds: 

*J.  M.  Budish  and  George  Soule  The  New  Unionism,  p.  10-11 
in  particular  and  the  whole  volume  in  general. 


H4       The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

First:  Strikes  which  merely  alleged  higher  wages 
or  shorter  hours  as  their  reason  for  the  effect  of  such 
demands  on  the  workers  or  the  public — the  real  point 
at  issue  being  something  entirely  different.  Mania 
strikes,  graft  strikes,  outlaw  strikes  or  other  strikes 
that  were  mere  incidents  in  political-labor  fights  for 
personal  or  group  power  are  of  this  kind ;  or 

Second:  Strikes  which  because  of  the  special 
after-the-war  circumstances  already  emphasized  re- 
sulted in  easy  victories  for  the  strikers.  These  will 
be  specially  considered  in  Chapter  XII;  or 

Third:  Strikes  in  which  the  demands  for  higher 
wages  and  shorter  hours  were  made  in  industries  or 
under  circumstances  where  it  was  practically  im- 
possible to  find  ways  and  means  for  granting  them — 
in  other  words  strikes  which  were  hopeless  from  the 
beginning  and  therefore  entirely  futile. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE  HIGH   COST  OF  FUTILE  STRIKES 

At  the  time  of  the  great  steel  strike  in  19 19,  when 
the  demand  for  a  reduction  of  the  twleve-hour  work- 
ing day  in  the  steel  industry  was  being  widely  agi- 
tated, the  Inland  Steel  Company  went  entirely  over 
to  the  eight-hour  day.  Within  eighteen  months,  it 
was  forced  to  go  back  to  the  twelve-hour  day  in  order 
to  keep  its  skilled  working  force  from  disintegrating 
to  seek  new  employment  where  the  men  could  again 
earn  twelve-hour  pay. 

France  has  a  national  eight-hour  law.  But  with 
the  need  since  the  war  of  extra  effort  to  recoup  war 
losses,  French  workmen  have  repeatedly  struck  for  a 
longer  working  day. 

Recognizing  the  obvious  difference  in  conditions 
between  the  fall  of  191 9  and  1920,  New  York  team- 
sters and  New  Jersey  street  car  operators  voluntarily 
agreed  to  increase  their  working  day  for  the  same 
pay. 

Organized  labor  has  made  repeated  attempts  to 
get  the  support  of  the  various  farmers'  organizations 

"5 


n6        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

in  their  fight  for  a  national  eight-hour  law.  But  the 
farmer,  with  his  own  personal  experience  as  to  how 
futile  any  arbitrary  human  schedule  is  in  dealing 
with  rain  and  sunshine,  growing  seasons,  bad  roads, 
limited  labor  supply,  and  other  practical  facts  of  his 
own  production  problem  can  easily  appreciate  that 
any  attempt  to  reduce  the  widely  different  and  com- 
plex production  problems  of  the  whole  country  to  any 
arbitrary  schedule — time  or  wage  or  otherwise — 
would  be  equally  futile  or  prohibitively  expensive. 

At  least  the  chief  trouble  with  the  whole  Le- 
nine-Trotsky  scheme  was  that  it  entirely  failed  to 
recognize  that  all  life  is  very  largely  built  on,  and 
determined  by,  facts.  Many  of  these  facts  are  fixed. 
The  farmer  has  got  to  do  most  of  his  work  in  summer. 
The  steel  industry  has  got  to  run  twenty -four  hours  a 
day.  Many  facts  are  not  only  fixed  but  variously 
fixed  according  to  different  fixed  circumstances. 
While  the  farmer  must  do  most  of  his  work  in  sum- 
mer the  coal  man  must  do  most  of  his  in  winter. 
Again  even  though  many  facts  can  be  changed  they 
must  be  faced  as  they  are  till  ways  and  means  are 
actually  found  for  changing  them.  The  farmer 
who  wants  to  raise  crops  in  winter  has  got  first  to  go 
South  or  to  California. 

Any  scheme  therefore — whether  of  running  a  gov- 
ernment,  or  operating  a  business,   or  striking  for 


The  High  Cost  of  Futile  Strikes   117 

higher  pay — which  attempts  to  include  the  many 
different  facts  of  life  in  any  arbitrary  one-fact 
theory,  no  matter  how  plausible — which  seeks  to 
accomplish  aims,  no  matter  how  idealistic  or  desir- 
able, without  facing  facts  as  they  are,  or  providing 
ways  and  means  to  actually  change  those  facts,  can 
only  expect  Lenine-Trotsky  results. 

One  of  the  facts  the  B.  R.  T.  men  emphasized  most 
strongly  in  their  strike  was  that  other  rapid  transit 
companies  in  and  around  New  York  had  voluntarily 
raised  the  wages  of  their  men.  But  the  B.  R.  T.  was 
in  the  hands  of  a  Receiver.  Thousands  of  investors, 
including  widows  and  minors,  who  own  B.  R.  T. 
stock  had  not  for  years  received  one  cent  of  dividends 
or  interest  on  the  money  they  have  invested.  The 
receiver  under  the  direction  of  the  court  had  given 
the  men  a  substantial  raise  the  year  previously  and 
was  willing  to  raise  them  again  as  much  as  he  could. 
This  strike  cost  the  workers  the  eight  per  cent,  in- 
crease the  company  could  and  did  offer  them,  caused 
immense  inconvenience  and  loss  to  the  two  million 
people  of  Brooklyn  and  did  not,  because  under  the 
special  circumstances  it  could  not,  get  anybody 
anything. 

It  was  in  connection  with  this  strike  that  Judge 
Mayer  stated  a  fundamental  rule,  which  is  generally 
applicable   under   similar   circumstances,    when   he 


n8        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

pointed  out  that,  "irrespective  of  personal  sympathy 
with  the  men  or  their  cause,  it  is  dishonest  to  en- 
ter into  agreements  with  workers  that  cannot  be 
carried  out,  or  can  only  be  carried  out  at  the  expense 
of  other  agreements  with,  or  obligations  to,  other 
interested  parties  or  the  public." 

The  dock  workers'  strike  which  tied  up  the  Clyde, 
Mallory,  and  Old  Dominion  lines  is  another  example 
of  a  strike  making  demands  for  the  meeting  of  which 
no  margin  was  available  or  could  be  created  under 
the  special  existing  circumstances. 

These  lines  were  being  run  at  a  loss  of  about  six 
million  dollars  a  year.  They  could  not  raise  their 
freight  rates  even  to  make  up  this  deficit,  let  alone  to 
pay  higher  wages,  without  the  permission  of  the 
Interstate  Commerce  Commission  which  permission, 
though  long  applied  for,  had  not  as  yet  been  given. 
Irrespective  then  of  what  may  be  thought  of  the 
right  or  justice  of  these  few  hundreds  of  dock  workers 
to  have  their  wages  raised  from  thirty-five  dollars 
to  forty -four  dollars  a  week  and  to  get  a  half  holiday 
on  Saturday — or  the  right  and  justice  of  their  insist- 
ing on  this  demand  at  the  price  of  raising  the  cost  of 
vegetables  for  several  months  over  one  hundred  per 
cent,  to  millions  of  families,  the  fact  remains  that 
under  the  circumstances,  it  was  not  impossible  for 
these  companies  to  raise  wages  so  the  strike  not  only 


The  High  Cost  of  Futile  Strikes  119 

did  not,  but  from  the  very  nature  of  the  circum- 
stances could  not,  gain  anything  for  anyone. 

Perhaps  the  most  conspicuous  instance  in  recent 
industrial  history  of  a  strike  in  which  one  of  the  de- 
mands, judged  merely  on  its  own  merit,  is  entirely 
reasonable  and  just,  yet  judged  on  the  basis  of  ways 
and  means  of  carrying  it  out,  offers  one  of  the  most 
complicated  and  difficult  problems  in  modern  indus- 
trial history,  is  the  demand  that  some  three  hundred 
thousand  men  working  twelve  hours  a  day  in  the  steel 
industry  be  given  a  shorter  work-day. 

There  is  no  question  that  a  twelve-hour  day  is  con- 
trary to  our  modern  ideal  of  working  conditions. 
The  leaders  of  the  steel  industry  themselves  admit 
this  freely.  "Does  the  public  think,"  remarked  an 
executive  of  a  big  steel  company  at  the  time,  "that 
we  don't  realize  that  twelve  hours  is  too  long  to  work 
regularly?  But,"  he  added,  "I  wish  the  public  or 
labor  or  somebody  could  tell  us  how  to  find  some  way 
out  of  it." 

Once  a  steel  furnace  is  allowed  to  cool,  its  whole 
interior  has  to  be  rebuilt  and  slowly  and  carefully 
reheated.  This  makes  it  an  imperative  necessity 
that  furnaces  be  operated  full  blast  twenty-four  hours 
a  day.  If  the  furnaces  must  be  run  twenty-four 
hours  a  day,  the  supply  of  raw  material  coming  in 
and  of  semi-finished  product  going  out,  must  be  kept 


120        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

moving  twenty-four  hours  a  day;  which  means  that 
about  half  the  equipment  must  operate  day  and 
night. 

In  the  steel  industry  the  only  possible  schedule 
therefore  for  some  half  the  workers  is  either  an  eight- 
or  a  twelve-hour  day.  Developed  during  a  period 
when  the  twelve-hour  day  was  general,  and  without 
any  possibility  as  in  other  businesses  of  shortening 
its  working  hours  gradually  with  a  minimum  of  ex- 
pensive readjustment  to  ten,  then  nine,  then  eight 
hours,  it  is  inevitable  that  the  steel  industry  should 
have  continued  longer  than  other  industries  on  a 
twelve-hour  basis. 

Any  sudden  readjustment  to  an  eight-hour  basis 
means  that  it  would  be  necessary  to  obtain  immedi- 
ately about  one  hundred  thousand  extra  steel  work- 
ers, a  large  proportion  of  them  skilled  steel  work- 
ers. There  was,  of  course,  no  such  body  of  steel 
workers  available  following  the  war  when  the  strike 
occurred. 

By  in  the  meantime  paying  the  price  in  less  effi- 
cient and  decreased  production,  such  a  body  of 
workers  might,  of  course,  in  time  be  built  up  and 
trained  from  outside  labor  or  from  foreign  immigra- 
tion. But  again  at  the  time  of  the  strike  there  was  a 
tremendous  labor  shortage. 

But  this  is  only  the  first  problem  that  would  have 


The  High  Cost  of  Futile  Strikes  121 

to  be  solved  before  any  reduction  of  the  twelve-hour 
day  is  possible. 

At  the  time  of  the  great  steel  strike  in  1919,  when 
the  injustice  of  the  twelve-hour  day  was  being 
widely  agitated,  the  Inland  Steel  Company  tried  the 
experiment  of  going  over  entirely  to  the  eight-hour 
basis.  But  after  eighteen  months'  trial  it  was  forced 
to  go  back  to  the  twelve-hour  working  day  in  order 
to  keep  all  its  old  skilled  workers  from  seeking  em- 
ployment in  other  plants  where  they  could  earn 
twelve-hour  pay.  From  this  as  well  as  general  ex- 
perience, there  is  little  question  that  while  steel 
workers  would  be  very  glad  to  work  an  eight-hour 
day  for  a  twelve-hour  pay  they  would  be  absolutely 
unwilling  to  work  an  eight-hour  day  for  eight-hour 
pay,  which  would  be  equivalent  to  a  one  third  or 
more  reduction  in  their  present  wages. 

Present  pay  on  the  other  hand  for  three  eight-hour 
shifts  would  mean  an  initial  increase  of  33^  per 
cent,  to  the  principle  labor  cost  of  steel.  For  if  the 
present  twelve-hour  men  continued  to  receive  twelve- 
hour  pay  for  an  eight-hour  day,  the  present  eight- 
hour  men  would  immediately  demand,  with  full 
justice,  that  they  be  raised  to  twelve-hour  pay,  and 
the  nine  and  ten-hour  men  that  they  be  raised  still 
higher.  And  these  eight-  and  nine-  and  ten-hour  men 
constitute  half  the  industry. 


122        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

This  would  have  meant  an  immediate  unparalleled 
increase  in  labor  cost  and  a  corresponding  increase 
in  the  price  of  our  single  most  necessary  and  widely 
used  manufacturing  product  at  a  time  when  the 
whole  country  is  already  staggering  under  high 
prices. 

Such  an  advance  in  steel  would  undoubtedly  have 
handicapped  seriously  our  much  needed  railroad  con- 
struction and  reequipment  and  general  building 
operations  for  years  to  come. 

Moreover,  steel  is  second  only  to  gold  as  a  com- 
modity of  international  commerce  whose  price  is 
regulated  by  international  conditions.  Superior 
manufacturing  methods  have  made  it  possible  for 
American  steel  makers  to  offset  the  very  much  lower 
wages  paid  by  their  European  rivals  and  compete  in 
the  world  markets.  The  immense  additions  to  our 
steel  capacity  during  the  war  promised  to  make  steel 
one  of  our  trump  cards  in  America's  bid  for  world 
commerce. 

In  France  where  there  has  been  a  universal  eight- 
hour  day,  strike  after  strike  has  been  reported  since 
the  war  against  this  law  or  to  force  employers  to 
evade  this  law  by  furnishing  two  or  four  hours  a  day 
extra  employment  so  that  the  war-impoverished 
workers  may  earn  the  extra  pay.  In  Germany  and 
Belgium  also  conditions  have,  or  soon  must,  force  a 


The  High  Cost  of  Futile  Strikes  123 

realization  of  the  necessity  of  extra  work  as  the  only 
means  of  recouping  their  war  losses,  and  these  na- 
tions, too,  have  vastly  increased  their  steel  capacity 
during  the  war. 

Any  necessary  serious  advance  in  the  production 
cost  of  our  steel  would  therefore  not  only  nullify  our 
present  favorable  advantage  but  make  us  the  victim 
of  such  foreign  competition  not  only  in  the  world 
markets  but  even  in  our  own  market. 

If  it  could  be  actually  shown  that  the  steel  worker 
himself  preferred  shorter  hours  to  higher  pay  or  that 
the  public  is  convinced  that,  irrespective  of  his  wishes, 
for  the  good  of  society  men  should  not  work  more 
than  eight  hours  a  day — neither  of  which  things  have 
been  shown — it  is  quite  possible  that  during  periods 
when  the  supply  of  labor  is  greater  and  the  demand 
for  steel  temporarily  slackened  that  a  readjustment 
to  an  eight-hour  working  day  could  be  effected  on  an 
economically  sound  basis.  In  fact,  not  only  the  eight- 
hour  pay  rate — long  since  established,  which  means 
that  all  steel  workers  get  time  and  a  half  for  all  hours 
over  eight,  but  many  other  developments,  indicate 
that  the  steel  industry  is  working  as  definitely  as 
possible  under  the  circumstances  in  this  direction. 
But  the  attempt,  by  a  group  of  radical  labor  leaders 
with  only  the  ignorant  foreign  steel  workers  for  a  fol- 
lowing, to  force  such  a  readjustment  overnight  dur- 


124        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

ing  a  labor  shortage  and  in  a  period  of  reconstruction 
when  all  the  steel  possible  was  needed  by  the  country, 
was  a  use  of  a  strike  that  was  as  criminal  as  it  was 
futile. ' 

Moreover,  we  must  not  lose  sight  of  this  fact  that 
the  thirty -five  dollars  a  week  that  the  foreign  and 
negro  dock  workers  had  been  receiving,  and  the  sixty- 
two  cents  an  hour  the  B.  R.  T.  workers  had  been  re- 
ceiving, were  considerably  above  the  average  which 
whole  classes  of  clerks,  teachers,  and  many  other 
much  higher  grade  of  workers  receive,  and  were  nearly 
seventy-five  per  cent,  above  the  minimum  set  by  the 
war  industries  board  even  for  industry.  We  must 
bear  in  mind,  also,  that  while  twelve  hours  is  un- 
doubtedly too  long  a  working  day  from  a  socially 
ideal  point  of  view,  the  very  public  and  workers  who 
preach  an  eight-hour  day  so  constantly,  are  them- 
selves, merely  for  their  own  convenience,  constantly 
keeping  a  large  proportion  of  our  1,500,000  retailers 
working  far  more  than  twelve  hours  a  day  and  think 
nothing  of  it.  The  very  forces  of  nature  keep  some 
ten  million  farmers  working  more  than  twelve  hours 
a  day  and  we  all  take  it  as  a  matter  of  course. 

'Just  as  the  present  volume  goes  to  press  there  are  indications 
that  the  steel  industry  plans  thus  to  take  advantage  of  the  present 
lessened  demand  for  steel  and  present  greater  supply  of  labor  to  go 
to  the  eight-hour  basis.  It  will  be  interesting  to  note  how  the  very 
highly  paid  twelve-hour  worker  will  like  in  the  long  run  having  his 
pay  reduced  to  more  nearly  that  of  the  average  worker. 


The  High  Cost  of  Futile  Strikes   125 

In  general  it  has  always  been  characteristic  of 
Americans  when  they  have  found  that  because  of 
circumstances  beyond  anyone's  control,  they  could 
not  earn  as  much  as  they  wanted  to  earn  or  condi- 
tions were  otherwise  unfavorable  in  the  job  or  in- 
dustry or  locality  where  they  were,  that  they  have 
had  enough  American  energy  and  initiative  to  go 
into  some  other  job  or  industry  where  circumstances 
were  more  favorable  to  the  exercise  of  their  initiative 
and  energy. 

When  our  fathers  and  forefathers  found  that 
farming  and  industry  in  the  East  had  become  over- 
crowded, they  never  thought  of  striking  against  a 
situation  that  was  inevitable.  Nor  have  we  any 
record  of  their  trying  to  solve  such  situations  by 
agitating  for  some  visionary  scheme  in  which  the 
government  or  the  State  or  somebody  else  was  to 
take  control  and  work  some  omnipotent  impossibility 
for  them.  Instead  by  tens  of  thousands  they  went 
where  opportunity  was. 

There  was  a  tremendous  shortage  of  labor  in  al- 
most all  fields  following  the  war.  Any  worker  in  any 
industry  which  could  not  pay  what  the  worker 
wanted  to  earn  could,  if  he  tried  with  one  tenth  of 
the  initiative  and  energy  that  sent  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  Americans  of  other  generations  West  and 
South,  easily  have  found  many  jobs  that  would  pay 


126        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

him  anything  he  could  reasonably  earn.  But,  of 
course,  that  would  take  him  away  from  his  local 
union  where  he  was  paying  dues  every  month.  And 
this  is  not  only  the  basic  reason  why  workers  are 
consistently  influenced  and  educated  to  depend  on 
strikes  rather  than  on  their  personal  energy  and  effi- 
ciency for  their  jobs  and  their  wage  advances,  but  as 
will  be  shown  later,  this  and  similar  motives  of  labor 
politics  were  the  actual  reason  why  most  of  such 
strikes  were  called. 

It  must,  however,  in  justice  to  the  great  body  of 
labor  be  pointed  out  that  eleven  thousand  B.  R.  T. 
men  did  realize  the  special  facts  of  that  situation  and 
only  joined  the  strike  because  under  the  present  sys- 
tem of  labor  politics,  one  thousand  radicals  could 
force  them  to  strike.  It  should  be  remembered  that 
the  great  body  of  employees  of  the  Clyde,  Mallory, 
and  Old  Dominion  lines  refused  to  join  the  dock 
workers  in  a  strike  so  obviously  unwarranted,  con- 
sidering all  the  conditions.  It  should  be  emphasized 
that  the  Inland  steel  workers  who  wanted  to  keep  on 
earning  twelve-hour  pay,  when  that  company  went 
to  an  eight-hour  basis  had  the  initiative  and  energy 
to  change  their  jobs  to  where  they  could  earn  this 
pay.  Again,  during  the  19 19  steel  strike,  over  half  of 
all  the  workers,  including  all  the  better-class  skilled 
workers,  refused  to  strike  for  two  good   common- 


The  High  Cost  of  Futile  Strikes  127 

sense  American  reasons :  first,  because  they  preferred 
the  very  high  wages  of  the  twelve-hour  day  and, 
second,  because  they  realized  that  the  fundamental 
basis  of  a  vital,  international  industry  cannot  be 
uprooted  overnight  merely  because  an  ignorant  min- 
ority in  the  whole  industry  was  persuaded  by  $1,007,- 
007.72  worth  of  political-labor  propaganda  to  demand 
that  it  should  be  thus  uprooted. 

American  industry  has  many  ideals  which  are  yet 
far  from  being  realized.  Because  of  human  limita- 
tions and  the  stubborn  persistence  of  facts,  some  of 
them  must  undoubtedly  be  slow  of  realization.  But 
when  left  to  themselves,  average  American  labor, 
and  when  he  knows  the  real  facts  the  average  Amer- 
ican citizen,  seldom  fail  to  realize  that  the  Lenine- 
Trotsky  method  of  rushing  at  ideals  without  regard 
to  facts  or  ways  and  means  is  not  only  futile  but 
generally  brings  only  Lenine-Trotsky  results. 


CHAPTER   XII 

THE   HIGH    COST   OF   STRIKE    "VICTORIES" 

Carpenters  through  various  strike  "victories" 
got  a  sixty-five  per  cent,  increase  in  their  rate  of 
wages  in  191 9  but  their  actual  earnings  decreased 
three  per  cent. 

The  coal  miners  as  a  result  of  the  great  coal  strike 
and  all  the  maneuverings  and  politics  and  negotia- 
tions that  followed  got  an  increase  of  fourteen  per 
cent,  in  wages.  But  because  of  a  system  which  that 
strike  "victory"  helped  to  perpetuate  the  average 
skilled  miner  is  getting  fifty  to  sixty  per  cent,  less 
wages  than  he  otherwise  would  be  earning. 

As  a  result  of  the  clothing  strike  "victories," 
wages  were  increased  from  about  thirty-five  dollars 
a  week  to  sixty-five  dollars  and  seventy-five  dollars, 
and  often  more  a  week,  for  thirty-five  per  cent,  less 
work.  But  a  year  later,  during  what  is  normally  the 
busiest  season  of  the  year,  half  of  all  the  clothing 
workers  were  walking  the  streets. 

As  a  result  of  various  strike  "  victories "  in  19 19, 
many  classes  of  textile  workers  got  an  aggregate  of 

128 


High  Cost  of  Strike  "  Victories  "  129 

twenty-two  per  cent,  more  wages  for  a  considerably 
lessened  production.  But  after  months  of  idleness 
during  the  latter  part  of  1920  the  same  workers  were 
glad  to  take  up  to  a  thirty  per  cent,  reduction  in 
wages  to  get  back  to  work  for  even  part  time. 

In  the  steel  industry,  on  the  other  hand,  where  the 
strike  failed,  while  wages  were  voluntarily  raised  from 
114  per  cent,  to  150  per  cent. — but  on  the  basis  of 
full  maintenance  of  production — during  1920  there 
was  practically  no  unemployment;  the  reduction  of 
wages  which  some  of  the  smaller  companies  made, 
due  to  the  demand  for  reduced  prices,  were  trivial  in 
comparison,  and  the  largest  steel  companies  had,  up 
to  March,  192 1,  not  had  to  reduce  wages  at  all. 

The  fact  has  already  been  emphasized  at  length 
that  throughout  American  industrial  history  higher 
wages  and  shorter  hours  have  been  permanently 
achieved  principally  because,  through  some  increase 
in  efficiency,  greater  production  has  been  achieved 
and  more  goods  could  be  made  and  sold  because  they 
could  be  sold  at  a  lower  or  relatively  lower  price. 

After  the  war  labor  undertook  to  work  on  exactly 
the  opposite  theory  from  this — that  wages  could  be 
raised  and  hours  shortened  indefinitely  by  mere 
strikes  irrespective  of  production  or  the  consequent 
price  to  the  public.  Labor  undertook  to  force  the 
introduction  of  this  theory  at  a  time  particularly 


i3<>        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

favorable  to  its  temporary  success  when  prices  had 
already  been  very  materially  raised,  values  were 
very  uncertain,  and  the  whole  country,  because  of  its 
after-the-war  reactions  and  prosperity,  was  buying 
very  freely  irrespectively.  Because  of  these  same  con- 
ditions manufacturers  in  many  lines  yielded  to  this 
forced  introduction  of  such  a  theory  in  their  industry. 

Thus  at  a  time  when  already  because  of  the  war 
there  was  a  tremendous  shortage  in  all  lines,  and 
prices  had  already  reached  an  unprecedented  height, 
strike  after  strike  piled  up  a  tremendous  further 
shortage  in  clothing,  shoes,  shirts,  and  a  wide  variety 
of  other  necessities  or  near  necessities.  This  short- 
age sent  prices  sky-rocketing. x  With  these  high 
prices  and  as  long  as  such  prices  lasted,  manufac- 
turers could  afford  to  pay  labor  almost  anything  at 
almost  any  terms  of  reduced  production.  They  did, 
and  the  workers  in  these  industries  went  back  to 
work  on  such  easy  hours  and  high  pay  that  they 
began  actually  to  believe  their  leaders'  assertions 
that  "organization"  and  strikes  were  all  that  were 
necessary  in  order  to  get  rich  quick. 

But  suddenly  a  great  public  reaction  set  in.  Peo- 
ple decided  they  would  not  continue  to  pay  these 
high  prices.  The  war  had  taught  them  they  could  do 

1 A  study  of  the  curve  of  retail  cost  of  clothes  (see  page  2)  in  con- 
nection with  these  facts  is  highly  illuminating. 


High  Cost  of  Strike  "Victories"  131 

without  a  great  many  things,  and  in  the  spring  of 
1920  they  decided  that  they  would  do  without  even 
very  many  of  the  ordinary  necessities  of  life  till  the 
prices  came  down.  The  public  still  continued  to  pay 
high  prices  for  food,  coal,  and  such  things  that  it  can- 
not exist  without.  But  it  stopped  buying  clothing, 
furniture,  and  a  wide  variety  of  such  products  so 
completely  that  there  at  once  began  to  be  a  tre- 
mendous— not  oversupply  but  oversupply  at  the 
price.  As  a  result,  by  summer,  factories  began  closing 
down  on  every  hand  or  materially  reducing  working 
time.  Labor  for  a  time  still  theoretically  enjoyed 
the  high  wages  which  its  strike  "victories"  had  won 
for  it,  but  actually  it  continually  got  less  and  less 
benefit  from  them  in  its  pay  envelopes. 

But  this  was  only  the  first  item  in  the  price  that 
labor  has  had  to  pay  as  a  result  of  its  initial  "vic- 
tories" in  trying  to  introduce  the  glittering  fallacy 
that  high  wages  can  be  had  by  some  other  means 
than  working  and  producing  for  them.  The  public's 
refusal  to  buy,  which  started  as  a  protest  against  ex- 
orbitant prices  in  certain  lines,  continued  and  spread 
in  spite  of  widespread  and  sharp  reductions  in  prices. 
Partly  as  a  reaction  from  the  previous  period  of  over- 
spending and  partly  because  the  public  has  a  way 
when  once  thoroughly  roused  of  keeping  going,  it  be- 
gan to  demand  not  merely  substantial  reductions  of 


132        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

former  high  price*  but  a  reduction  that  at  least  ap- 
proximated pre-war  prices,  and  not  only  on  the  classes 
of  goods  whose  former  exorbitant  prices  had  started 
the  movement  but  in  all  lines.  These  lengths  to 
which  the  public  went  in  its  own  retaliatory  strike 
not  only  continued  and  spread  unemployment,  but 
made  necessary  the  very  material  wage  reductions 
in  many  industries  that  marked  the  beginning  of  the 
next  production  season.  This  would  not  necessarily 
have  been  so  much  to  labor's  disadvantage  if  prices 
should  remain  at  the  sacrifice  level  of  the  beginning 
of  1 92 1.  But  there  are  many  reasons  to  believe  that 
they  will  not,  and  the  average  employer  after  his  ex- 
perience of  19 1 9  and  1920,  including  his  very  ma- 
terial losses  from  the  enforced  sale  of  stocks  produced 
at  spring  of  1920  costs  and  sold  at  fall  of  1920  prices, 
will  undoubtedly  for  some  time  to  come  be  a  very  differ- 
ent man  from  whom  to  try  to  get  new  raises  in  wages. 

But  this  second  high  price,  in  prolonged  unemploy- 
ment and  material  wage  reduction,  which  workers 
had  to  pay  for  their  former  strike  "victories,"  was 
itself  evidence  of  a  third,  corollary  loss,  in  that  it 
proved  how  conspicuously  labor  failed  to  capitalize 
and  so  share  in  the  opportunity  for  continued  and 
increased  prosperity  which  our  increased  equipment, 
our  possible  new  world-markets,  as  well  as  the 
condition  and  disposition  of  the  American  market 


High  Cost  of  Strike  "Victories"  133 

held  out  right  after  the  war  to  American  energy  and 
productivity. 

There  is  no  question  that  these  strike  "victories," 
at  least  for  the  time  being,  utterly  carried  away  great 
classes  of  labor  with  the  idea  of  big  money  for  short 
hours  and  easy  work.  Whether  or  not  labor  will 
have  to  pay  a  fourth  big  price  for  these  victories 
which  led  it  to  believe  in  such  theories  depends  very 
largely  on  whether  or  not  it  interprets  the  subse- 
quent results  of  those  theories  in  their  true  light,  or 
continues  to  allow  itself  to  be  deceived  by  the  leader- 
ship which  propounded  such  theories  and  is  already 
busy  at  work  explaining  away  their  true  results  and 
propounding  further  theories  calling  for  further 
strikes  as  a  fallacious  means  of  preventing  the  in- 
evitable working  out  of  their  own  fallacies. 

While  strike  "victories"  which  perpetrate  funda- 
mentally unsound  economic  conditions  must  always 
inevitably  be  expensive  to  labor  there  is  no  question 
that  in  some  cases  this  has  not  as  yet  become  obvi- 
ous to  the  worker  himself. 

Coal,  for  instance,  is  such  an  absolute  necessity, 
and  coal  production  is  so  absolutely  dominated  by 
the  powerful  coal  miners'  union  that  the  average 
coal  miner  has  experienced  no  special  unemployment 
and  no  wage  reduction.  Moreover,  the  great  coal 
strike,  although  it  cost  the  country,  including  a  mil- 


134        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

lion  other  laborers,  a  billion  dollars,  got  him  a  four- 
teen per  cent,  wage  increase  which  he  still  enjoys. 
But  it  also  strengthened  the  power  of  the  system — 
which  has  already  been  described — which  keeps  a  tre- 
mendous excess  of  workers  in  the  coal  industry  and 
working  on  an  average  of  only  half  to  two  thirds  of 
the  time,  which  means  that  to  the  average  ambitious 
miner  it  constitutes  one  of  the  heaviest  handicaps 
and  taxes  in  industrial  history. 

Joseph  Stewart,  an  unnaturalized  Lithuanian, 
twenty-eight  years  old,  with  three  in  his  family, 
worked  in  the  Jerome  mine,  near  Fayette  City.  He 
is  an  ambitious  coal  miner  whose  case  is  reported  in 
the  Senate  investigation  of  December,  1919.  By 
working  steadily  with  some  overtime,  Stewart  earned 
$3,070.20  for  the  nine  months  for  which  the  Senate 
had  his  record,  or  at  the  rate  of  four  thousand  dollars 
a  year. 

Joseph  Grandosky,  an  unnaturalized  Austrian,  is 
another  average  skilled  miner.  He  worked  seven- 
teen days  less  than  full  time  during  the  same  nine 
months  and  worked  no  overtime.  His  record,  accord- 
ing to  the  same  Senate  report,  shows  that  his  earn- 
ings for  these  eight  and  a  half  months  were  $1,792.67, 
or  at  the  rate  of  over  $2,500  a  year.  Grandosky  paid 
an  income  tax  on  $2,345.73  in  1918.  All  this  was  before 
the  strike  and  so  before  the  fourteen  per  cent,  raise. 


High  Cost  of  Strike  "  Victories  "  135 

The  Senate  investigation  further  showed  that  the 
averaged  more  skilled  miner,  if  he  worked  steadily 
eight  hours  a  day  every  day  his  mine  worked,  could 
earn  from  $2,500  to  $3,000  a  year,  and,  if  he  worked 
overtime,  that  much  more  in  proportion.  But  in 
order  to  give  work  to  some  hundred  thousand  or  more 
extra  men  and  keep  them  in  the  union  paying  some 
$200,000  or  more  every  month  into  the  union  treas- 
ury— which  at  present  collects  about  $11,000,000  a 
year — the  miners  are  so  discouraged  from  working 
more  than  part  time  that  few  of  them  dare  or  care  to 
do  it.  So  prevalent  is  this  practice  that  in  some  dis- 
tricts any  man  is  branded  as  a  "scab"  who  works 
more  than  three  days  a  week. 

If  the  coal  miners  had  not  won  their  strike  and  the 
union  leaders  who  perpetrated  this  strike  had  been 
totally  defeated,  if  the  hundred  thousand  or  so  extra 
men  who  are  not  needed  in  the  coal  mines  should  go 
back  to  the  farms  and  the  other  industries  from  which 
they  came,  and  where  they  are  vitally  needed,  and 
the  average  skilled  coal  miner  were  thus  permitted  to 
work  regularly,  he  would  become  one  of  the  best- 
paid  workers  in  American  industry. 

The  coal  strike  got  fourteen  per  cent,  raise  for  all 
miners.  It  helped  maintain  a  system  under  which 
the  union  is  getting  $2,000,000  to  $2,500,000  extra 
dues  every  year.     But  this  can  scarcely  be  said  to 


136        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

compensate  the  skilled  miner  who  but  for  this  abnor- 
mal system  could  work  steadily  and  make  from  fifty 
to  sixty  per  cent.  more. 

In  the  building  trades,  also,  the  nation-wide  short- 
age of  housing  facilities,  and  the  powerful  hold  labor 
organizations  had  on  the  industry,  continued  not  only 
to  maintain  but  to  increase  wages.  But  a  special 
statistical  study  of  the  carpenters'  trade  showed  that, 
while  the  rate  of  wages  paid  such  workers  thus  in- 
creased sixty-five  percent.,  the  actual  earnings  of  the 
average  carpenter  was  three  per  cent.  less.  And  it 
is  probable  that  if  the  facts  in  many  other  trades  were 
similarly  analyzed  they  would  reveal  a  similar  condi- 
tion of  wage  raises  which  were  largely  or  wholly 
fictitious,  often  chiefly  because  they  were  nullified  by 
the  extent  to  which  labor  leaders'  pernicious  or  un- 
warranted interference  handicapped  building  opera- 
tions and  so  cut  down  the  workers'  employment. 

In  other  ages  when  education  was  far  less  wide- 
spread, the  man  who  could  read  and  write  and  figure 
accurately  was  so  much  less  common  than  the  man 
who  produced  things  with  his  hands,  that  the  man 
who  merely  wrote  out  the  reports  or  kept  the  books 
or  records  of  what  labor  did  and  produced  received 
a  far  higher  wage  than  the  men  who  did  the  pro- 
ducing. 

But  the  man  of  to-day  who  with  his  hands  and 


High  Cost  of  Strike  "Victories"  137 

brain  actually  produces  is  far  more  valuable  to  so- 
ciety than  is  the  man  who  merely  makes  figures  or 
reports  about  that  production. 

The  man  who  produces  is  to-day  having  the  value 
of  his  work  recognized  on  a  new  scale  in  his  pay  en- 
velope. And  every  broad-minded,  intelligent  Amer- 
ican knows  that  this  is  a  good  thing  for  both  the 
economic  and  social  advancement  of  the  whole 
country. 

The  war  with  its  upsetting  of  old  standards  and 
its  readjustments  of  many  things  on  a  basis  of  greater 
fairness,  and  particularly  in  the  way  it  brought  home 
to  all  the  people  the  importance  of  labor,  is  prima- 
rily responsible  for  the  recent  remarkable  advance. 
Strikes  are  not.  Strikes  on  the  contrary  have  gone 
a  long  way  toward  taking  away  from  labor  the  big- 
gest advantages  which  the  war  brought. 

There  is  no  question,  of  course,  that  wages  were 
brought  to  their  high  war  level,  not  by  unions  or 
any  other  organized  labor  agency,  but  by  the  peculiar 
conditions  and  demands  of  the  war. 

Immediately  after  the  war  Mr.  Gompers  an- 
nounced to  all  employers  that  the  whole  power  of 
organized  labor  would  work  unitedly  against  any  re- 
duction of  the  high  war  wages.  If  Mr.  Gompers  had 
also  announced  to  all  labor — and  insisted — that  the 
united  power  of  all  organized  labor  would  also  work 


138        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

unitedly  for  a  continuation  of  the  kind  of  produc- 
tion by  labor  that  could  make  war  wages  profitable, 
it  is  very  probable  that  this  highly  desirable  program 
could  have  been  carried  out. 

But  instead  of  maintaining  war  production  to 
justify  war  wages,  four  million  workers,  chiefly 
organized  workers  or  workers  who  became  organized 
as  a  result  of  such  strikes,  started  going  on  strikes  in 
which  they  themselves  directly  wasted  134,000,000 
working  days,  and  caused  indirectly  the  total  loss  of 
other  hundreds  of  millions  of  working  days,  which  so 
further  increased  our  production  shortage  that  prices 
went  up  sixty-five  points  higher  even  than  the  high 
war  level. 

Thus,  although  employers  did  continue  to  pay  the 
high  war  wages,  labor  itself  in  effect  at  once  began  to 
cut  its  own  wages  by  forcing  up  prices  on  itself  as 
well  as  on  the  rest  of  the  country. 

But  when  prices  began  to  go  up,  even  though 
chiefly  because  of  labor's  own  failure  to  produce, 
organized  labor  at  once  changed  its  demand — not  in 
order  to  increase  production  and  help  remedy  condi- 
tions but  by  calling  more  strikes  for  still  higher 
wages  irrespective  of  production,  and  so  continuing 
the  much  discussed  vicious  circle  of  alternately  in- 
creasing raises  in  both  wages  and  prices,  of  which 
the  public  became  more  and  more  the  helpless  victim 


High  Cost  of  Strike  "  Victories  *  139 

till  it  took  matters  into  its  own  hands  by  its  own  very 
effective  strike  for  lower  prices  which  lower  prices 
had  a  very  widespread  effect  in  bringing  down  wages 
with  them. 

There  have,  however,  been  a  sufficient  number  of 
very  conspicuous  exceptions  to  these  general  facts 
to  indicate  most  convincingly  that  war  wages  might 
have  been  kept  up  if  organized  labor  had  paid  any 
attention  whatever  to  the  necessary  ways  and  means 
of  keeping  them  up. 

The  United  States  Steel  Corporation  is,  perhaps, 
the  largest  single  employer  in  the  country.  Its 
250,000  employees  include  skilled,  semi-skilled,  and 
unskilled  workers.  Their  one  strike  by  their  un- 
skilled workers  was  defeated  and  none  of  their 
workers  are  under  the  domination  of  organized 
labor.  The  company,  therefore,  in  spite  of  the 
general  falling  off  in  efficiency  of  production  was  able 
to  maintain  full  efficiency  of  production  among  its 
own  workers.  The  wages  of  all  these  employees  not 
only  went  up  considerably  above  the  war  level  but 
remained  up  through  the  following  period  of  general 
wage  reduction. 

The  General  Electric  Company  employs  chiefly 
skilled  or  semi-skilled  workers.  They  are  largely 
union  men  but  their  one  strike  immediately  after 
the  war  for  a  reduced  production  efficiency  was  com- 


140        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

pletely  defeated,  and  the  company  was  therefore 
not  only  able  to  maintain  but  to  increase  production 
efficiency  after  the  war.  All  wages  went  above  the 
war  level  and  were  not  reduced  during  the  following 
period  of  general  wage  reductions. 

The  White  Motor  Truck  Company  employees  are 
chiefly  skilled  men.  The  recognized  working  prin- 
ciple of  both  management  and  men  has  been  put  in 
these  words:  "Production  is  the  greatest  essential 
in  a  factory.  For  the  whole  community  to  maintain 
a  comfortable  and  humane  standard  of  living,  it  is 
necessary  for  every  man  in  the  community  to  pro- 
duce consistently.  This  idea  in  industry  will  in- 
evitably take  all  of  us  forward  to  a  better  sort  of 
industrial  millennium  than  can  be  attained  by  any 
other  method.  For  the  industrial  millennium,  if  it  is 
to  be  attained,  must  come  through  intelligent  work 
intelligently  directed;  it  cannot  be  made  to  jump  out 
of  a  box  by  pulling  a  string."  There  were  no  after- 
the-war  strikes  in  the  White  plant.  Wages,  always 
high,  increased  materially  beyond  the  war  level  and 
were  not  reduced  during  the  following  period  of  gen- 
eral wage  reduction. 

Out  of  over  three  thousand  strikes  in  one  year  it 
would  seem  that  there  must  have  been  many  in- 
dividual strikes  which  were  called  only  after  a  careful 
consideration  of  all  facts,  and  only  as  a  last  resort 


High  Cost  of  Strike  "Victories"  141 

to  enforce  some  reasonable  and  possible  measure  of 
justice,  and  which,  therefore,  in  spite  of  their  cost, 
may  be  justified  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  workers 
and  at  least  partially  justified  from  the  public  point 
of  view.  But,  if  so,  such  strikes  were  hopelessly  hid- 
den in  the  haystack  of  outlaw  strikes,  mania  strikes, 
graft  strikes,  futile  strikes,  and  of  strikes  where 
"victory"  only  brought  or  helped  bring  conditions 
worse  than  those  it  sought  to  remedy.  Moreover, 
considering  the  reduction  of  standard  working  hours 
and  the  large  advance  in  wages,  both  actually  and  in 
far  greater  proportion  than  to  any  other  class,  which 
the  war  had  already  brought  to  labor — considering 
also  the  special  after-the-war  conditions  and  the 
special  disposition  of  employers  to  pay  any  reason- 
able or  possible  wage — there  is  no  reason  to  believe 
that  such  strikes,  which  might  thus  be  justified,  were 
numerous  enough  to  warrant  classification. 

The  public,  including  a  big  proportion  of  labor 
itself,  has  undoubtedly  long  since  reached  the  con- 
clusion that  the  chief  result  of  the  great  after-the-war 
strike  epidemic  was  merely  to  pile  up  immense  losses 
for  industry  without  getting  very  much  in  actual 
results  even  for  labor  itself.  A  careful  study  of  these 
strikes  can  only  reenforce  this  general  conclusion  by 
showing  that  the  actual  losses,  not  only  to  industry 
but  to  the  public  and  to  labor  itself,  were  far  greater 


H2        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

than  we  had  dreamed  and  that  the  results  to  every- 
body, including  labor  itself,  were  chiefly  less  than 
nothing — with  one  exception.  There  is  one  very  small 
special  class  which  profited  tremendously  from  these 
strikes. 

Again,  the  very  fact  that  this  after- the- war  strike 
phenomenon  is  popularly  referred  to  as  an  "epi- 
demic" or  "mania,"  indicates  the  popular  conception 
that  these  strikes  were  chiefly  due  to  upset  industrial 
conditions  and  labor's  natural  after-the-war  feeling 
of  unrest — in  other  words,  that  these  strikes  were 
merely  the  workers'  way  of  manifesting  a  temporary 
unbalance  which  other  classes  experienced  and  mani- 
fested in  other  ways,  and  so  were  one  of  the  unavoid- 
able indirect  expenses  of  the  war  which  had  to  be 
paid  along  with  the  other  costs  of  the  war. 

Labor  unrest  as  part  of  world  unrest  was  unques- 
tionably a  big  factor  in  the  after-the-war  strike  situa- 
tion. But  it  is  impossible  to  have  followed  even 
thus  far  the  facts  here  presented  without  a  growing 
realization  that  this  unrest  was  also  constantly 
stimulated  and  manipulated  and  led. 

It  is  these  two  facts — first,  that  there  was  a  "small 
special  class  which  did  make  a  tremendous  profit 
out  of  after-the-war  strikes";  and,  second,  that  the 
after-the-war  labor  unrest  was  not  only  "manipu- 
lated and  led"  but  was  deliberately  and  unscrupu- 


High  Cost  of  Strike  "Victories"  143 

lously  "whipped"  into  a  strike  mania,  which 
furnished  the  simple  clear  explanation  of  the  whole 
strike  problem  and  constitute  a  far  more  serious 
indictment  of  these  strikes  than  all  their  costs  and 
losses  put  together. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

STRIKES  AS  MERE  INCIDENTS  IN   FIGHTS   FOR 
PERSONAL   POWER 

When  Louis  Fridiger,  counsel  for  the  B.  R.  T. 
Union,  was  pleading  passionately  with  the  men  not 
to  begin  the  Brooklyn  car  strike  which  rival  leaders 
were  trying  to  instigate,  his  argument  included  noth- 
ing as  to  the  best  interests  of  the  people  of  Brooklyn 
— it  did  not  even  discuss  the  best  interests  of  the 
workers — his  whole  interest  was  in  the  advancement 
of  the  union  from  which  he  derived  his  power  and 
income,  and  his  big  argument  and  basic  plea  was 
that  ' '  such  a  strike  will  break  up  the  best  union  in 
the  country." 

It  is  a  matter  of  court  evidence  that  the  Brother- 
hood of  Railroad  Trainmen  has  a  reserve  fund  of  ten 
million  dollars  in  its  treasury. 

The  Senate  investigation  showed  that  the  United 
Mine  Workers  collects  a  minimum  of  eleven  million 
dollars  a  year  dues  from  its  members. 

Unquestionably  many  factors  and  conditions  con- 
tributed to  the  coal  strike.    All  factions  among  the 

144 


Strikes  for  Personal  Power        145 

coal  union  officials  were  undoubtedly  agreed  on  the 
strike's  principal  aim — that  of  keeping  as  many  men 
as  possible  in  the  union.  But  the  coal  strike  was 
forced  at  the  time  and  in  the  way  it  was,  in  breach 
of  the  union's  written  contract,  against  the  sure 
opposition  of  the  government  and  public  opinion,  by 
one  group  of  coal  union  officials  who  were  not  in 
power  to  compromise  and  possibly  oust  the  coal 
union  officials  who  were  in  power;  and  the  coal 
union  officials  who  were  in  power  actually  went 
through  with  the  strike  in  open  defiance  of  the  govern- 
ment, and  fought  it  out  with  such  ruthless  disregard 
of  public  cost  and  suffering,  primarily  to  keep  for 
themselves  their  offices  and  their  power. 

Political  fights  within  unions,  between  individuals 
or  factions,  for  control  of  such  immense  numbers  of 
men  as  make  up  great  modern  unions,  and  for  such 
immense  sums  as  great  modern  unions  collect  and 
possess,  and  for  the  power  which  such  control  gives, 
are  the  principal  reasons  back  of  many  of  the  costliest 
strikes  we  have  had  since  the  war. 

All  the  underwear  manufacturers  in  Cohoes,  N.  Y., 
were  shut  down  for  over  a  month  during  the  spring  of 
1920 — all  their  production  stopped  and  thousands 
of  producers  idle — simply  and  solely  because  of  a 
factional  fight  between  two  rival  unions. 

Ninety-five  per  cent. — nine  and  one  half  out  of 


H6        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

every  ten  strikes  in  the  building  trades  in  1919,  ac- 
cording to  a  Senate  investigating  commission,  were 
called  simply  as  incidents  in  fights  between  rival 
unions  for  authority  or  jurisdiction  or  other  forms  of 
power.  Take  a  single  instance — the  doors  that  go 
into  modern  fireproofing  construction  generally  con- 
sist of  a  core  of  wood  covered  with  metal.  For  years, 
all  over  the  country,  a  fight  has  been  going  on  be- 
tween the  carpenters'  union  and  the  metal  workers' 
union  as  to  which  has  jurisdiction  over  the  men  who 
hang  this  kind  of  door.  In  Boston,  after  a  long 
series  of  strikes  over  this  question,  it  was  decided 
that  this  was  a  metal  worker's  job.  In  New  York, 
after  a  similar  long  series  of  strikes,  it  was  decided 
that  it  was  a  carpenter's  job. 

Again,  one  man  used  to  set  a  locomotive  headlight. 
To-day  when  a  headlight  needs  setting  four  men  have 
to  do  the  job  at  more  than  four  times  the  cost,  be- 
cause each  man  has  to  wait  till  another  man  does  his 
part  and  puts  up  his  tools  before  he  gets  out  his  own 
tools  and  does  his  part — all  because  of  jealousies  and 
rivalries  between  different  unions. 

The  printers'  strike,  which  cut  the  wages  of  a 
million  and  a  half  outside  workers;  part  of  the  ship- 
ping strike,  which  almost  paralyzed  eastern  industry 
for  most  of  the  spring  of  1920,  and  a  big  proportion  of 
the  other  more  costly  strikes  we  have  had,  were  called 


Strikes  for  Personal  Power        H7 

and  continued  despite  every  public  protest  and  effort 
simply  and  solely  because  of  some  political  fight 
between  union  officials  for  political  control  of  some 
union  or  group  of  unions. 

Practically  all  so-called  "outlaw  strikes"  were  of 
this  kind,  the  only  real  difference  between  them  and 
the  strikes  caused  by  jealousies  and  rivalries  which 
recognized  labor  leaders  did  sanction,  being  that  in 
the  case  of  the  "outlaw  strikes"  such  jealousies  and 
rivalries  were  directed  against,  or  contrary  to,  the 
interests  of  the  recognized  labor  leaders  themselves. 

The  modern  labor  movement,  of  course,  began 
because  the  average  worker,  without  capital  and 
absolutely  dependent  on  his  job,  could  not  protect 
his  own  rights  or  advance  his  legitimate  interests 
against  his  powerful  employers. 

Moreover,  as  industry  progressed  and  the  amount 
of  capital  and  power  in  the  hands  of  the  employer 
grew,  it  was  necessary  that  labor  unions  should 
become  larger  and  better  organized  in  order  to 
have  any  chance  to  deal  on  equal  terms  with  the 
employer. 

As  the  power  of  the  unions  grew,  the  number  and 
power  of  the  individual  labor  officials  grew,  and  also 
the  amount  of  money  collected  from  union  members 
in  dues  grew.  It  is  merely  human  nature  that  with 
this  growth  of  union  power  and  union  income  rival- 


148        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

ries  and  jealousies  for  the  control  of  that  power  and 
that  income  should  grow  with  them. 

Take  the  case  of  the  metal  doors  with  wood  cores. 
Carpenters  had  always  hung  doors,  and  if  they  con- 
tinued to  hang  them  they  could  continue  to  pay  dues 
into  the  carpenters'  union. 

But  when  metal  doors  began  to  be  used,  the  job  of 
hanging  this  kind  of  doors  was  one  which  could  logic- 
ally be  claimed  as  a  metal  workers'  job.  If  the  metal 
workers'  union  could  enforce  such  a  claim  it  would 
mean  that  all  men  who  have  to  hang  such  doors 
would  have  to  come  in  and  pay  dues  to  increase  the 
power  and  income  of  the  metal  workers'  union. 

This  is  a  simple  illustration  on  a  small  scale  of  a 
condition  that  has  grown  up  in  and  permeates  all 
organized  labor  from  the  simple  local  union  to  the 
great  national  and  international  amalgamations  and 
federations,  until  to-day  scheming  and  fighting  and 
maneuvering  to  increase  the  power  of  their  particular 
union  or  group  of  unions  by  increasing  its  membership 
and  the  income  it  gets  from  its  members,  undoubtedly 
demands  a  far  larger  part  of  the  average  labor  leader's 
skill  and  energy  than  any  relation  between  the  union 
and  the  employer. 

It  does  not,  of  course,  make  much  difference  to  the 
ordinary  worker  whether  he  belongs  to  one  particular 
union  or  another.    Nor  does  the  average  union  mem- 


Strikes  for  Personal  Power        H9 

ber  get  any  special  benefit  from,  or  have  any  special 
interest  in,  the  fact  that  his  particular  union  has 
100,000  or  200,000  members  in  the  rest  of  the  country, 
or  whether  these  members  pay  $1,000,000  or  $2,000,- 
000  a  year  into  the  general  union  treasury. 

But  the  increase  of  the  power  and  income  of  his 
particular  union  does  offer  big  advantages  to  the 
union  leader,  because  it  means  a  corresponding  in- 
crease in  his  own  prestige  and  power  as  the  man  who 
controls  them. 

This  is  why  professional  labor  leaders  welcomed 
and  manipulated  and  exaggerated  labor's  after-the- 
war  unrest  into  a  strike  epidemic  and  took  every 
advantage  of  it  to  fight  through  strike  after  strike  to 
increase  the  power  and  income  of  their  own  particular 
union  or  group  of  unions.  This  is  why,  irrespective 
of  its  inevitable  effect  on  industry,  they  dangled 
before  their  followers  the  lure  of  wage  increase  after 
wage  increase  as  an  incentive  for  more  and  more 
strikes.  This  is  why  they  did  not  scruple  at  attempt- 
ing even  such  an  industrial  and  public  catastrophe 
as  the  outlaw  railroad  strike.  This  is  why  also,  that 
as  long  as  the  present  system  of  labor  organization, 
with  its  constant  incentive  to  ambitions  for  such 
labor-political  power  and  income,  continued  to  exist ; 
and  as  long  as  labor  leaders  continue  to  have  the  un- 
restricted use  of  the  strike  as  an  easy  and  convenient 


150        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

weapon  for  furthering  such  ambitions,  there  is  little 
question  that  labor  leaders  will  continue  to  use  strikes 
in  the  same  unscrupulous  and  costly  manner  when 
ever  they  find  it  convenient  and  possible. 

But  again,  the  possibilities  of  power  and  prestige 
which  go  with  control  over  tens  of  thousands  and 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  union  members  and  the 
immense  sums  these  pay  in  dues,  result  not  only  in 
intense  rivalries  between  unions,  but  between  in- 
dividual leaders  or  groups  of  leaders  within  a  union, 
for  that  control.  And  these  intra-union  rivalries  also 
have  been  the  cause  of  some  of  our  most  costly  strikes. 

The  bituminous  coal  miners'  union  has  for  a  good 
many  years  collected  a  minimum  of  over  eleven 
million  dollars  a  year  members'  dues.  How  many  of 
these  tens  of  millions  of  dollars  may  still  be  in  the 
treasury  no  one  in  the  world  but  a  few  inside  union 
officials  know.  The  Brotherhood  of  Railroad  Train- 
men has  a  reserve  fund  of  ten  million  dollars  in  its 
union's  treasury. 

There  are  other  labor  organizations  whose  mem- 
bers also  pay  millions  of  dollars  into  the  hands  of  a 
few  officials. 

Management,  which  is  generally  secret — and  as 
far  as  the  public  knows  responsible  to  no  one — of  a 
fund  of  ten  million  dollars  a  year  and  perhaps  of  even 
greater  sums  in  reserve;  the  tremendous  industrial 


Fights  for  Personal  Power       15 J 

and  political  power  which  their  influence  over  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  union  members  gives  to  higher 
union  officials;  the  opportunity  which  present  condi- 
tions give  to  high  union  officials  of  publicly  and  con- 
spicuously exercising  their  power,  of  being  able  to 
fill  columns  of  newspaper  space  with  their  interviews 
and  arguments  with  great  corporation  presidents, 
Senators,  Cabinet  members,  and  even  the  President 
of  the  United  States,  all  offer  a  tremendous  tempta- 
tion and  incentive  to  labor  leaders  to  scheme  and 
maneuver  and  fight  within  the  union  with  one 
another,  to  obtain  for  themselves,  or  hold  against 
personal  rivals,  control  of  such  financial  and  political 
and  conspicuously  public  power. 

The  engineering  of  big,  conspicuous  strikes,  which, 
whatever  their  effect  on  the  public  or  on  labor,  could 
be  made  to  bring  a  technical  victory  for  the  labor 
leaders  who  called  or  handled  the  strike,  or  the  forc- 
ing of  such  big,  conspicuous  strikes  with  the  idea  that 
they  would  be  defeated  and  so  bring  defeat  on  some 
rival  leader  who  had  to  call  or  handle  them,  have  been 
notoriously  one  of  the  chief  means  which  labor  lead- 
ers have  used  in  their  struggle  for  control  of  union 
power. 

During  the  war  Mr.  Frank  J.  Hayes  president  of 
the  United  Mine  Workers  of  America,  had  been  what 
was  known  as  one  of  the  Administration  labor  men. 


152        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

In  fact,  he  became  so  closely  associated  with  the  Ad- 
ministration's ideas  and  policies  that  he  went  to 
Paris  with  President  Wilson  as  one  of  his  labor  ad- 
visers on  the  peace  treaty  and  the  League  of  Nations. 
During  Mr.  Hayes's  absence  in  Europe  the  affairs  of 
the  bituminous  coal  miners  were  in  the  hands  of  John 
L.  Lewis,  acting  president,  and  William  Green, 
secretary-treasurer. 

It  was  common  knowledge  in  coal  circles  that 
certain  powerful  Western  State  officials  of  the  United 
Mine  Workers  had  for  some  time  previous  to  this,  by 
political  maneuvering  and  by  alliances  with  the  more 
radical  element  among  the  miners,  been  continually 
increasing  their  power  in  union  affairs,  and  it  was 
commonly  admitted  that  they  were  aiming  at  control 
of  the  national  union.  It  is  also  obvious  that  the 
prolonged  absence  of  the  union  president  in  Paris 
and  reports  of  a  break-down  in  his  health  made  the 
summer  and  fall  of  19 19  a  psychological  moment  for 
seeking  to  increase  this  power. 

Now  the  most  obvious  and  generally  used  method 
in  labor  circles  of  weakening  your  rival's  hold  on  his 
followers  and  increasing  your  own  hold  on  them  is  to 
promise  that  if  they  will  follow  you,  you  will  get  them 
higher  wages  than  your  rival  has  been  able  to  get  for 
them.  Acting  on  this  very  simple  and  effective  and 
common  practice  this  group  of  state  officials  proposed 


Strikes  for  Personal  Power        153 

and  began  a  widespread  agitation  among  all  coal 
workers  for  a  sixty  per  cent,  raise  in  wages  or  a 
strike  on  November  1st  if  this  increase  were  not 
granted. 

A  coal  strike  in  November,  just  at  the  beginning 
of  the  winter,  would  be  a  national  calamity.  The 
government  would  not  allow  it.  Moreover,  Mr. 
Hayes,  president  of  the  union,  who  would  have  to 
call  such  a  strike,  had  personally  signed  a  wage  agree- 
ment, under  government  supervision,  which  would 
have  to  be  definitely  and  publicly  broken  if  the  strike 
were  called  November  ist.  In  addition  to  this,  Mr. 
Hayes's  close  association  with  the  Administration 
before  and  at  Paris  combined  to  make  it  practically 
impossible  for  him  to  call  such  a  strike,  and  it  would 
obviously  be  futile  for  him  to  propose  such  an  ad- 
vance, in  breach  of  his  own  contract,  unless  he 
backed  it  with  a  strike. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  "sixty  per  cent,  increase  on 
November  ist  or  strike"  had  been  so  skillfully  agi- 
tated among  the  miners,  and  particularly  among  the 
local  leaders  and  delegates,  and  such  a  large  senti- 
ment had  been  created  in  favor  of  it  that  if  Mr. 
Hayes  should  oppose  it  at  the  union  convention, 
where  it  was  to  be  brought  up,  there  was  the  greatest 
possibility  that  he  might  be  defeated  and  ousted 
from  power. 


154        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

But  whether  because  of  these  circumstances  or 
because  his  health  actually  would  not  permit,  Mr. 
Hayes,  when  the  Paris  Conference  was  concluded, 
did  not  reassume  the  duties  of  his  office,  but  went 
directly  to  a  sanatorium  in  Colorado.  This  left  Mr. 
Lewis,  the  acting  president,  and  Mr.  Green,  secretary- 
treasurer,  face  to  face  with  this  situation : 

If  they  opposed  the  "sixty  per  cent,  increase  or 
strike"  there  was  a  probability  that  the  miners' 
delegates  would  vote  to  carry  this  program  over  their 
heads,  which  not  only  meant  great  loss  of  prestige 
but  the  probability  that  the  opposing  faction  that 
originated  and  popularized  the  sixty  per  cent,  in- 
crease demands  would  come  into  full  national  power 
at  the  next  national  election. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  Mr.  Green  and  Mr.  Lewis 
acquiesced  in  the  ' '  sixty  per  cent,  increase  on  Novem- 
ber 1st  or  strike  "  they  would  still  receive  little  credit 
because  the  movement  had  been  conspicuously  origin- 
ated and  advanced  by  their  opponents.  Moreover, 
as  the  officials  in  power,  they  would  bear  the  re- 
sponsibility before  the  government  and  public  opin- 
ion for  calling  such  a  strike;  they  would  bear  the 
burden  of  managing  the  strike ;  and  if  such  a  strike — 
based  on  a  breach  of  written  contract,  necessarily 
bitterly  opposed  by  the  government  and  the  people, 
and  one  whose  very  threat  would  impose  a  tremen- 


Strikes  for  Personal  Power        155 

dous  hardship  on  the  people — should,  as  seemed  in- 
evitable under  the  circumstances,  be  defeated,  Mr. 
Lewis  and  Mr.  Green  would  have  to  bear  the  blame 
among  all  the  union  members  for  the  defeat.  And 
this  again  promised  well  for  their  opponents  at  the 
next  national  election. 

Obviously  Mr.  Green  and  Mr.  Lewis  faced  an 
almost  complete  dilemma.  The  trap  was  so  laid  that 
either  to  oppose  the  strike  or  to  carry  out  the  strike 
seemed  to  mean  defeat  and  loss  of  prestige  and  prob- 
ably loss  of  office.  Obviously,  as  a  matter  of  prac- 
tical strategy,  there  was  only  one  way  in  such  a 
situation  that  any  leaders  could  expect  to  keep 
their  prestige  and  their  power.  First,  they  would 
have  to  substitute  a  program  even  more  popular 
with  the  men  and  for  which  they  could  claim  the 
credit;  and,  second,  they  would  have  to  carry 
this  program  through  to  victory,  or  at  least  to 
enough  victory  to  satisfy  the  men  that  they  had 
got  for  them  everything  it  was  possible  for  anyone 
to  get. 

Messrs.  Lewis  and  Green  did  exactly  these  two 
things.  They  originated  a  new  program  of  not  only 
a  sixty  per  cent,  advance,  but  that  advance  for  thirty 
hours'  work  a  week.  Then  they  fought  to  carry  out 
this  program  with  every  weapon  and  every  means 
in  their  power.     As  an  incident  to  this  fight  over 


156        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

mere  personal,  labor-political  ambitions  a  million 
other  laborers  were  thrown  out  of  employment  and 
the  country  suffered  over  a  billion  dollars'  loss.  But 
Messrs.  Lewis  and  Green  kept  their  jobs. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

STRIKING    FOR    MONOPOLY    DOMINATION    BY   A   CLASS 
OF  everybody's  NECESSARIES  OF  LIFE 

"Nothing  in  the  way  of  good  industrial  relations 
is  to  be  expected  from  organized  labor  as  represented 
by  the  American  Federation  of  Labor  and  the  four 
Brotherhoods.  The  only  peace  which  can  come  out 
of  those  organizations  is  the  peace  of  an  absolute 
domination — not  only  of  the  American  industries  but 
of  the  government  itself." — Dr.  Charles  W.  Elliott, 
President  Emeritus  of  Harvard  University. 

The  "twelve-hour  day"  and  "collective  bargain- 
ing" were  the  reasons  publicly  assigned  for  the  steel 
strike.  But  Wm.  Z.  Foster,  who  led  this  strike,  him- 
self states  the  real  reason  why  the  American  people 
had  to  pay  some  five  hundred  million  dollars  for  such 
a  strike,  when  he  says  in  his  own  book  describing 
this  strike: 

"As  the  war  wore  on — the  situation  changed 
rapidly  in  favor  of  unions.  The  demand  for  soldiers 
and  munitions  had  made  labor  scarce;  the  steel 
industry  was  the  master-clock  of   the  whole  war 

157 


158        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

program  and  had  to  be  kept  going  at  all  costs.  .  .  . 
It  was  an  opportunity  (for)  .  .  .  one  mighty  drive 
to  organize  the  steel  plants  of  America  .  .  .  such  as 
might  never  occur  again." 

Moreover,  Mr.  Fitzpatrick,  the  other  most  impor- 
tant leader  of  the  steel  strike,  entirely  confirms  Mr. 
Foster  by  his  testimony  before  the  Senate  Committee 
that:  "  The  labor  organizations,  realizing  what  tre- 
mendous influence  the  steel  industry  has  on  all  other 
industries,  made  up  its  mind  that  it  would  have  to 
organize  the  steel  industry,  no  matter  at  what 
cost." 

When  the  great  Amalgamated  Iron  Steel  and  Tin 
Workers'  Union  was  asked  to  assist  to  win  the  steel 
strike  they  replied  that  they  would  only  help  on  con- 
dition that  they  should  have  a  fifty-one  per  cent, 
control  in  the  management  and  the  result  of  the 
strike.  And  the  different  unions  who  furnished  the 
$293,139.66  which  was  to  be  spent  on  "organization 
propaganda  "  prior  to  the  strike  to  arouse  the  workers 
to  a  willingness  to  strike,  put  in  this  $293, 139.66  only 
on  condition  that  they  should  receive  back  $3.00  per 
man,  or  about  $1,500,000,  if  the  strike  were  won. 

Business  agents  of  a  garment  workers'  union  ad- 
mitted, according  to  court  evidence,  that  their  strike 
was  being  called  "to  increase  the  funds  of  the  in- 
ternational   union,  which   thereby   would   get  new 


Labor- Monopoly  Domination     159 

members  who  would  be  required  to  pay  $17.50  for  a 
membership  book." 

The  Brotherhood  of  Railroad  Trainmen  has  a 
reserve  fund  of  ten  million  dollars  in  its  treasury. 
The  Coal  Miners'  Union  collects  a  minimum  of 
eleven  million  dollars  a  year  dues  from  its  members. 
What  its  reserve  fund  is  no  outsider  knows.  There 
are  other  big  unions  whose  financial  resources — 
though  they  keep  them  very  carefully  hidden — must 
be  as  great  or  nearly  as  great  as  these,  and  scores  of 
smaller  unions  whose  incomes  and  war  chests  are  in 
relative  proportion. 

The  Republican  party,  comprising  very  con- 
spicuously over  half  of  all  the  people  of  the  country 
was  accused  during  the  presidential  campaign  of 
1920  as  though  it  were  a  crime,  of  attempting  to  raise 
fifteen  million  dollars  in  order  frankly  and  openly  to 
put  before  all  the  people  its  ideas  of  what  is  for  the 
best  good  of  all  the  people. 

The  great  union  leaders  can  and  do  command  sums 
many  times  greater  than  this,  which  are  used  in  ways 
that  are  largely  hidden  and  unaccounted  for  to  ad- 
vance the  interests  of  powerful  and  publicly  irrespon- 
sible organizations  which  at  most  represent  less  than 
ten  per  cent,  of  the  people. 

Neither  the  President  of  the  United  States  nor  any 
officer  or  group  of  officers  in  our  entire  government 


160        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

possesses  the  possibility  of  such  power  to  injure  all 
the  rest  of  the  people  as  is  possessed  and  was  ex- 
ercised by  the  coal  union  leaders.  The  basis  of  this 
power  is  the  fact  that  with  the  eleven  million  dollars 
a  year  dues  they  can  maintain  a  labor  organization 
which  can  absolutely  control  the  labor  in  the  coal 
industry  and  that  therefore  has  a  monopoly  domina- 
tion over  this  great  industry  that  is  vital  to  the  whole 
nation. 

In  addition  therefore  to  the  fact  that  has  already 
been  emphasized;  namely,  that  such  immense  sums 
offer  a  constant  temptation  to  different  factions 
within  the  unions  to  fight  for  control  of  these  sums 
and  the  power  such  control  gives — fights  for  which 
power  have  been  one  of  the  causes  of  some  of  our 
most  costly  strikes — the  very  existence  of  such  sums, 
under  irresponsible  labor  leaders'  control — the  possi- 
bility through  strikes  of  raising  other  such  sums  and 
thus  acquiring  more  such  power  has  created  a  condi- 
tion of  labor  monopoly  domination  in  certain  great 
industries  and  the  ambition  for  labor  monopoly 
domination  in  more  and  more  great  industries  which 
is  the  real  crux  of  the  whole  strike  situation  and  the 
most  vicious  menace  which  has  ever  threatened 
America  and  Americanism. 

In  Russia,  the  small  minority  labor  class  to-day 
completely  dominates  the  whole  government.     In 


Labor-Monopoly  Domination     161 

Germany,  the  labor  class  minority  has  a  dispropor- 
tionate voice  in  the  government  and  has  in  certain 
crises  absolutely  dominated  the  policy  of  the  govern- 
ment. In  England,  the  labor  class  minority  is  frankly 
and  openly  working  toward  the  domination  of  the 
majority  of  the  rest  of  the  people. 

Now,  the  means  by  which  labor  minorities  have 
thus  dominated  or  sought  to  dominate  has  not  been 
through  orderly  processes  of  government,  but  through 
getting  a  monopoly  control  of  the  production  of  the 
necessaries  of  life,  and  then  threatening  to  cut  off 
the  necessaries  of  the  people  until  they  obtained  the 
individual  or  class  advantages  which  they  sought. 

Powerful  labor  leaders  in  America  to-day  have 
exactly  such  a  monopolistic  control  in  the  basic  coal 
industry,1  and  they,  through  their  absolute  control 
of  the  labor  which  is  necessary  to  the  production  of 
coal,  exercised  exactly  this  kind  of  control  in  the  coal 
strike. 

The  government  itself  ordered  the  union  leaders  to 
call  the  strike  off.  The  leaders  went  through  the 
form  of  sending  telegrams  to  the  local  unions  which 
did  not  and  could  not  bear  the  official  union  seal 

1 "  The  organization  known  as  the  United  Mine  Workers  of  Amer- 
ica and  its  branches,  as  conducted  and  managed  at  the  time  of  the 
suit  and  for  many  years  before,  was  a  common  law  conspiracy  in 
unreasonable  restraint  of  trade." — Justice  Pitney,  United  States 
Supreme  Court. 


1 62        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

without  which,  under  union  law,  no  union  document 
is  valid.  These  telegrams,  therefore,  were  not  meant 
actually  to  call  off  the  coal  strike  as  the  government 
ordered.  They  were  not  understood  by  the  men  as 
an  order  to  call  off  the  strike,  but  merely  as  a  sub- 
terfuge, and  they  did  not  call  off  the  coal  strike. 
The  government  said  it  would  not  treat  with  the 
union  leaders  till  the  men  had  gone  back  to  work. 
But  the  government  did  depose  Mr.  Garfield,  the 
fuel  administrator  from  power  at  command  of  the 
union  leaders  and  not  only  treated  with  but  made 
agreements  with  the  union  leaders  before  the  men 
went  back  to  work.  The  union  leaders  did  not  get 
all  they  tried  to  get  out  of  the  coal  strike  but  they 
did  dominate  the  government  sufficiently  to  demon- 
strate to  labor  the  possibilities  of  making  even  the 
government  yield  to  their  organized  power. x 

Organized  labor  has  also  long  had  such  a  mono- 
poly domination  in  many  other  industries.  In  the 
building  trades  it  has  conspicuously  had  and  exer- 
cised such  domination,  in  many  cases  just  as  un- 
scrupulously as  we  now  know  Brindel  exercised  it  in 
New  York.  Nominally  organized  labor  has  such  a 
domination  in  the  railroad  field  but  fortunately  most 

1 "  If  you  complain  that  four  hundred  thousand  men  held  up  the 
government,  what  will  eic,rht  million  of  them  do,  if  they  can,  to  hold 
up  the  government?" — Garretson,  President  Order  of  Railroad 
Conductors. 


Labor- Monopoly  Domination     163 

of  the  workers  are  of  a  class  which  has  not  in  the 
past  permitted  that  domination  to  be  actually  ex- 
ercised very  far. 

The  war  offered  a  particular  favorable  opportunity 
for  the  extension  of  this  monopoly  domination  of 
industry  through  a  more  complete  organization  and 
control  of  the  labor  whose  work  is  absolutely  neces- 
sary to  the  operation  of  industry.  As  Mr.  Foster 
puts  it  "the  gods  were  fighting  on  the  side  of  labor  " — 
it  was  an  opportunity  to  "organize"  labor  such  as 
might  never  occur  again.  As  a  result  of  this  more 
intensive  "organization"  and  because  of  the  vast 
numbers  of  new  workers  who  had  come  from  all  sorts 
of  miscellaneous  jobs  and  minor  industries  into  the 
great  basic  "industries  which  were  thus  being  'or- 
ganized,'" the  union  membership  of  the  country 
doubled  during  this  period  and  the  union  member- 
ship in  many  industries  particularly  affected  by  the 
war  increased  many  times  that. 

As  a  result,  labor  leaders  exercised  a  degree  of 
power  and  influence  they  had  never  before  ap- 
proached. Even  minor  labor  leaders  held  important 
industrial  situations  in  the  hollow  of  their  hands. 
Brindel's  curt  instructions  to  a  contractor  to  raise 
his  price  from  $175,000  to  $400,000  on  a  job,  and  Mr. 
Mahon's  mere  "no"  over  the  long  distance  tele- 
phone which  forced  two  million  people  of  Brooklyn 


1 64        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

to  endure  the  Brooklyn  Rapid  Transit  strike,  are 
far  more  typical  than  the  public  has  ever  appreciated. 
As  for  the  big  labor  leaders,  it  is  well  known  that 
their  favor  was  sought  even  by  presidents  and 
prime  ministers.  That  it  should  be  the  supreme 
ambition  of  labor  leaders,  and  the  basic  policy  of 
labor  organizations  to  continue  such  conditions  after 
the  war  is  natural  and  obvious. 

It  is  also  obvious  that  when  the  war  ended  the 
average  worker  too  was  very  anxious  to  maintain 
the  advantages — particularly  the  new  wage  scale — 
which  the  war  had  brought  him.  Moreover,  the  vast 
numbers  of  men  who  had  come  from  miscellaneous 
jobs  into  the  great  industries  and  enjoyed  all  the 
advantages  which  the  war  had  brought  to  the  regu- 
lar workers  in  those  industries  were  not  only  equally 
anxious  to  keep  their  war  scale  of  wages  but  were 
particularly  anxious  to  keep  their  special  war  jobs  in 
order  the  better  to  insure  this. 

The  situation  both  in  regard  to  the  position  and 
ambition  of  labor  leaders  and  the  positions  and 
ambitions  of  the  average  worker  pointed  directly 
and  obviously  to  the  logical  line  of  strategy  which 
labor  leaders  at  once  adopted — that  of  demanding 
a  continuation  of  war  wages  and  in  addition  a 
decrease  of  hours  so  that  all  the  new  men  who 
had  come  into  the  "organized"  industries  during 


Labor- Monopoly  Domination     165 

the  war  could  be  kept  in  these  industries  and  so  in 
the  unions. 

In  pursuance  of  this  strategy,  labor  officials,  who 
were  still  at  that  time  preponderantly  of  the  so-called 
"conservative"  as  distinct  from  the  radical  group, 
immediately  and  widely  announced  that  the  em- 
ployers of  the  country  were  planning,  at  the  end  of 
the  war,  to  at  once  reduce  labor  to  its  former  posi- 
tions and  wages.  They  therefore  called  upon  all 
labor  to  stand  unanimously  by  its  leaders  in  their 
fight  to  keep  for  labor  its  war  jobs  and  war  wages. 

The  first  big  strike  after  the  war — that  in  the  Gen- 
eral Electric  Company  plants — was  a  test  strike  on 
this  program.  It  asked  for  no  increase  in  wages, 
but  did  ask  for  decreased  hours,  so  that  the  extra 
workers  who  had  come  into  the  industry  during 
the  war  could  be  maintained  in  their  jobs  and  in 
the  unions. 

But  the  General  Electric  strike  was  a  failure — 
chiefly  because  the  big  majority  of  the  better  workers 
who  would  be  able  to  keep  their  jobs  and  their  wages 
on  their  own  merits  had  no  enthusiasm  for  a  strike 
which  might  risk  their  jobs  and  lose  these  wages, 
merely  for  the  sake  of  keeping  in  the  union  less 
efficient  workmen  who  could  not  keep  their  jobs  on 
their  own  merits. 

Moreover  this  strategic  program  of  the  so-called 


166        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

"conservative"  union  leaders  was  at  once  influenced 
by  another  important  development. 

The  great  majority  of  skilled  workers  in  industry 
who  are  always  able  to  keep  their  jobs  and  get  good 
pay  on  their  own  merits  may  be  union  members  and 
firm  believers  in  unionism  as  a  constructive  force 
in  industry,  but  they  have  always  repudiated  the 
radicalism  and  labor  chauvinism  of  the  German  or 
Russian  type  that  seeks  a  monopolistic  labor  domina- 
tion of  industry  as  a  means  to  minority  domination  of 
the  country. 

The  big  body  of  new  and  nondescript  workers,  on 
the  other  hand,  who  came  into  the  unions  in  such 
numbers  during  the  war  and  who  feared  that  the  end 
of  the  war  meant  the  end  of  their  war  jobs  and  high 
war  pay,  became  easy  converts  to  this  labor  radical- 
ism and  began  to  give  radical  leaders  an  increasing 
weight  of  following  which  made  it  possible  for  them 
to  get  control  of  the  union  organizations  in  many  of 
our  greatest  industries.  And  in  most  others  it  made 
them  powerful  enough  to  force  the  less  radical  leaders 
to  adopt  radical  programs  to  keep  their  power. 

Moreover,  radicalism  at  once  won  a  conspicuous 
and  sweeping  success  by  an  almost  complete  unioni- 
zation of  the  clothing  industry. 

In  the  clothing  trades,  workers'  wages  had  already 
gone  up,  because  of  the  demand  during  the  war,  from, 


Labor- Mono  poly  Domination     167 

perhaps,  the  lowest  paid  to  $30,  $35,  and  $40  a  week. 
While  the  work  on  uniforms  and  war  equipment  was, 
of  course,  about  to  be  discontinued  the  discharge  of 
four  million  soldiers,  each  with  a  considerable  bonus 
in  cash,  meant  a  big  increase  in  demand  for  ordinary 
clothing  that  was  bound  to  continue  the  demand  and 
maintain  wages  in  the  clothing  industry. 

The  great  bulk  of  workers  in  the  clothing  industry 
had  never  been  skilled,  and  therefore  never  very  well 
organized.  If  they  could  be  organized,  however,  this 
very  fact  would  put  them  more  completely  under 
control  of  their  leaders.  And  the  numbers  of  work- 
ers, of  course,  meant  especially  big  sums  in  dues  to 
increase  further  the  power  of  its  leaders. 

The  tremendous  demand  for  clothing  created  by 
the  discharge  of  four  million  soldiers  offered  a  re- 
markable opportunity  which  union  leaders  would 
perhaps  never  have  again  to  promise  immense  in- 
creases in  wages  if  the  workers  would  join  the  union, 
with  a  practical  certainty  of  being  able  temporarily 
to  make  good  on  that  promise  because  of  these  special 
circumstances. 

In  the  beginning  of  1919,  therefore,  union  organ- 
izers started  an  intensive  campaign  among  those 
disorganized  or  semi-organized  workers,  promising 
them  if  they  would  join  the  union,  the  union  would 
get  them  twice  even  their  high  war  wages.     With 


1 68        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

such  an  incentive  the  union  membership  increased 
sixfold. 

As  a  result  of  this  clever  strategy  another  big  basic 
industry  was  put  under  the  domination  of  men  who 
seek  only  their  own  or  their  class  interest.  And  a 
new  source  of  income  was  created  which  must  amount 
to  at  least  many  hundred  thousand  dollars  a  year 
with  which  to  perpetuate  and  extend  this  domina- 
tion. 

The  strangle  hold  which  this  labor  monopoly  thus 
got  on  the  clothing  industry  sent  prices,  as  has  al- 
ready been  emphasized,  to  a  point  where  the  whole 
public  openly  rebelled,  and  through  months  of  re- 
fusing to  buy  clothes  temporarily  broke  this  hold. 
But  if  these  and  other  leaders  had  been  only  a  little 
less  radical  and  had  forced  prices  merely  to  a  point 
just  short  of  where  they  would  arouse  general  public 
action  the  public  would  undoubtedly  have  had  to 
continue  to  pay  indefinitely.  Moreover,  in  the  case 
of  coal  and  other  more  urgent  necessities  the  public 
cannot  do  without. 

The  failure  of  the  General  Electric  strike  and  the 
success  of  the  clothing  strike  pointed  certain  very 
conspicuous  lessons  which  labor  politicians  were  not 
slow  to  see — that  in  their  strikes  for  maintaining 
their  unions  at  their  full  war  membership  and 
strength,  first  that  they  could  not  depend  on  sufficient 


Labor- Monopoly  Domination     169 

support  from  older  skilled  workers  in  strikes  which 
were  obviously  merely  in  the  interest  of  the  itinerant 
war  worker  and  his  being  retained  in  the  union,  and 
second,  that  they  could  not  hope  to  win  such  strikes 
without  the  older  skilled  workers'  help,  and  third, 
that  the  one  way  to  assure  his  active  support  was 
through  promising  him  a  material  increase  in  wages. 

Moreover  this  very  necessity  of  fighting  for  big 
wage  increases  even  above  the  high  war  level  in  order 
to  induce  the  better  class  workers  to  support  these 
strikes  to  maintain  the  unions  at  full  war  strength  at 
which  strength  it  dominated  their  industries,  of  itself 
made  it  even  more  necessary  for  such  organizations 
to  dominate  their  industries  in  order  to  win  their 
fights  for  these  wage  increases. 

In  other  words,  both  the  strong  rivalry  of  radical 
leaders  whose  chief  and  specific  aim  was  the  domina- 
tion of  their  industry  by  their  union,  and  the  very 
strategic  necessity  of  the  circumstances,  forced  all 
organized  labor  more  and  more  into  a  position  where 
it  had  to  make  its  chief  policy  that  of  completely 
dominating  its  industry  in  order  to  maintain  its  or- 
ganization. And  in  order  to  do  this  it  had  to  keep  its 
members  constantly  in  hand  and  ready  to  strike 
through  constant  agitation  and  through  continued 
increases  or  at  least  promises  of  increases  in  wages. 

Not  only,  therefore,  does  the  very  existence  of  such 


170        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

monopoly  domination  over  industry  by  labor  or- 
ganizations carry  the  possibility  of  great  injury  to  the 
public,  but  the  very  means  by  which  such  domination 
has  had  to  be  achieved  necessitates  an  unscrupulous 
attack  on  public  interest  by  constant  strikes,  and 
continual  unjustified  raises  in  wages.  That  this 
was  not  only  true  under  the  special  conditions  during 
and  just  after  the  war,  but  is  generally  true  is  amply 
demonstrated  by  the  labor  history  of  the  coal  and 
building  industries  which  have  been  perhaps  longest 
and  most  thoroughly  controlled  by  labor  monopolies. 

But  labor  leaders  during  the  war  and  in  the  strike 
epidemic  period  after  the  war  in  no  sense  limited 
their  efforts  to  extending  and  maintaining  a  domina- 
tion in  the  industries  already  held.  On  the  contrary, 
not  only  through  the  great  clothing  and  steel  strikes 
but  through  many  lesser  strikes  they  constantly 
fought  to  extend  their  power  and  domination  over 
new  industries. 

For  it  is  perfectly  obvious  that  if  the  present 
organization  of  five  hundred  thousand  men  and  the 
collection  of  eleven  million  dollars  annual  dues  can 
give  labor  leaders  such  a  control  of  the  coal  industry 
for  instance,  as  makes  it  possible  for  them  to  keep 
one  hundred  thousand  extra  men  at  work  and  paying 
dues  to  them,  and  to  otherwise  dominate  the  condi- 
tions in  that  industry  so  as  to  assure  a  continuation 


Labor- Monopoly  Domination 


171 


of  their  power  and  income,  that  just  in  proportion 
as  they  can  similarly  "organize"  other  great  basic 
industries  they  will  have  just  that  much  greater 
power  and  income  with  which  to  further  their  own  or 
their  mere  class  interests. 

It  has  long  been  a  fundamental  union  policy  to 
work  for  a  more  and  more  complete  control  of  our  big 
basic  industries.  But  formerly  union  leaders  had  a 
considerable  respect  for  the  power  of  public  opinion, 
and  their  method  was  usually  to  go  slow  and  wait 
for  favorable  opportunities.  They  generally  let  the 
workers  themselves  take  the  initiative,  and  if  a  cause 
for  which  they  were  striking  was  just  and  was  other- 
wise susceptible,  with  the  right  kind  of  presentation, 
of  getting  public  sympathy,  the  big  amalgamated  or 
federated  unions  would  come  in  as  the  champions  of 
the  oppressed  worker  who  were  not  strong  enough 
to  fight  their  own  battles,  and  in  that  way  build  up 
their  power  in  that  industry. 

But  for  the  radical  labor  leaders  who  now  dominate 
organized  labor  or  are  in  sufficiently  powerful  posi- 
tions to  force  conservative  leaders  into  radical  poli- 
cies in  order  to  keep  their  jobs  this  process  is  entirely 
too  slow. 

Formerly,  also,  any  group  of  labor  could  not  be 
depended  on  to  go  immediately  on  strike  because 
some  outsider  told  them  to  strike  for  some  grievance 


172        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

which  they  had  never  thought  of  themselves  or  for  a 
union  not  yet  in  existence.  But  after  the  war  the 
strike  epidemic,  encouraged  and  manipulated  as 
has  been  described,  soon  become  so  widespread  that 
great  classes  of  labor  would  stop  work  on  practically 
any  pretext  and  on  practically  anybody's  say-so. 

Moreover,  labor  leaders  soon  found  out  that  the 
public  could  be  made  to  stand  for  far  more  than  they 
had  imagined  or  at  least  that  it  was  not  organized  or 
united  enough  to  make  its  opinion  count. 

Therefore,  whereas,  under  the  old  strategy  of  wait- 
ing till  the  workers  had  a  real  grievance  and  them- 
selves took  the  initiative  in  striking,  it  took  years  to 
completely  organize  an  industry  and  to  build  up  the 
power  and  the  millions  of  dollars  income  which  the 
organization  of  great  industries  gives,  radical  labor 
leaders  became  more  and  more  convinced  that,  with 
labor's  willingness  to  strike  and  the  public's  supine- 
ness,  they  could  grab  off  a  whole  industry  and  make 
millions  of  dollars  in  dues  available  immediately  at 
one  stroke. 

The  idea  was  naturally  vastly  intriguing  to  the  big 
labor  leaders  and  they  lost  little  time  in  taking  steps 
to  carry  it  out.  But  great  basic  "unorganized"  in- 
dustries are  not  numerous  so  competition  sprang  up 
for  the  privilege  of  such  "organization."  Radical 
leaders  "organized"  the  clothing  trade  and  radicals 


Labor-Monopoly  Domination     173 

won  the  privilege  of  leading  in  the  19 19  attempt  to 
"organize"  the  steel  industry,  but  many  other  groups 
of  unions  insisted  on  having  a  share  in  the  efforts  and 
prospective  profits.  How  keen  this  competition  was, 
and  that  some  of  the  cooperating  unions  had  a  greater 
interest  in  their  own  share  of  the  prospective  spoils 
than  in  the  success  of  the  movement  is  strongly  sug- 
gested by  Mr.  Foster's  recriminations  in  his  book 
describing  this  strike. 

The  extent  to  which  such  competition  among 
unions  and  leaders  for  the  profits  of  engineering  and 
controlling  labor  organizations  in  new  fields  was 
often  carried  is  further  strikingly  suggested  by  the 
fact  that  a  meeting  in  New  York  City  in  September, 
1920,  which  was  to  determine  the  control  of  a  new 
super-monopoly  to  control  all  New  York  unions  and 
at  which  Mr.  Gompers  himself  presided,  ended  in  a 
free-for-all  fight  among  rival  labor  leaders  which 
required  the  calling  of  extra  police  reserves. 

Moreover,  the  fields  for  such  efforts  are  so  limited 
and  the  prospective  profits  and  power  so  great  that 
the  failure  of  one  such  "organization"  scheme,  due 
to  the  fact  that  a  majority  of  the  workers  indicate 
by  refusing  to  strike  that  they  do  not  want  such 
"organization  "  of  their  industry,  only  seems  to  whet 
the  labor  leaders'  ambition. 

In  August,  1920,  just  a  year  after  the  failure  of  the 


174        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

great  and  expensive  steel  strike  of  1919,  the  executive 
council  of  the  American  Federation  of  Labor  met  at 
Atlantic  City  to  map  out  a  tremendous  new  campaign 
to  attempt  to  "organize"  the  steel  industry  in  1921. 
Several  interesting  facts  have  already  leaked  out. 
Thirty  unions  have  been  let  in  on  the  drive.  The 
Amalgamated  Association  of  Iron,  Steel,  and  Tin 
Workers  it  is  understood  again  refused  to  help  such 
a  movement  unless  it  received  a  fifty-one  per  cent, 
control  of  the  organizing  committee — which  presuma- 
bly meant  fifty-one  per  cent,  of  the  power  and  the 
income  if  the  drive  went  over.  Whether  this  par- 
ticular faction  succeeded  in  getting  these  demands  or 
not  has  not  been  announced.  There  is,  of  course,  to 
be  a  large  war  fund  used  for  intensive  propaganda 
work  to  arouse  the  workers  to  a  willingness  to  strike 
if  the  leaders  decide  they  want  a  strike.  Secretary 
Morrison  refused  to  state  the  size  of  this  fund.  Nor 
did  he  say  how  it  had  been  subscribed,  how  it  was 
to  be  used,  whether  those  who  subscribed  it  were 
promised  five  hundred  per  cent,  on  their  "invest- 
ment" as  in  the  former  steel  strike,  or  what  other 
promises  were  made  to  those  who  subscribed  it. 
Secretary  Morrison,  however,  most  casually  and 
naively,  did  say:  "I  should  not  say  that  a  strike  is 
contemplated.  I  should  rather  say  that  'organiza- 
tion' is  the  objective. " 


Labor- Monopoly  Domination     175 

In  other  words,  the  big  steel  industry,  which  is 
almost  as  important  to  the  country  as  the  coal  in- 
dustry, is  again  to  be  the  victim  of  tremendous  labor 
agitation,  artificially  forced  from  outside.  The  men 
who  are  forcing  this  agitation  are  not  themselves 
connected  with  the  steel  industry,  nor  have  they  been 
elected  or  given  any  authority  that  is  known  of  by  the 
steel  workers  to  represent  them.  They  certainly  do 
not  represent  the  users  of  steel  or  the  public  in  general . 
These  men  in  their  preliminary  announcement,  more- 
over, make  no  mention  of  any  consideration  of  public 
interest.  They  make  no  mention  of  what  it  is  pro- 
posed to  do  for  the  steel  workers.  They  are  obviously 
concerned  chiefly  with  maneuvering  and  jockeying 
with  each  other  for  special  preferred  positions  in  a 
proposed  fight  to  increase  their  own  power. 

The  last  steel  strike  cost  the  public  nearly  five 
hundred  million  dollars.  A  bigger,  better  organized 
steel  strike  would  probably  cost  the  public  far  more 
than  this. 

But  with,  or  perhaps  without,  a  strike — it  is  ad- 
mittedly merely  a  matter  of  strategy  whether  the 
public  must  bear  the  cost  of  a  steel  strike  or  not — 
there  is  the  chance  that  labor  leaders  can  get  a 
strangle  hold  on  another  great  basic  American  in- 
dustry, through  which  they  can  still  further  threaten 
or  punish  the  whole  people  as  they  have  already 


176        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

threatened  and  punished  them  through  their  labor 
monopoly  control  of  the  coal  industry;  there  is  a 
chance  that  five  hundred  thousand  new  members  may 
be  brought  under  their  control  who  would  pay  about 
ten  million  dollars  a  year  into  treasuries  they  control. 
The  public  be  damned ! 


CHAPTER  XV 

STRIKES  AND  RADICALISM 

Organized  labor  to-day  is  supposedly  divided 
into  two  groups  according  to  its  ultimate  aims.  The 
so-called  conservative  group  which  it  is  publicly 
claimed  still  controls  the  majority  of  the  old  estab- 
lished unions  as  well  as  the  American  Federation  of 
Labor,  is  theoretically  willing  that  private  capital 
and  private  energy  should  keep  the  burden  and 
responsibility  and  the  nominal  management  of  in- 
dustry. Its  leaders  merely  aim  ostensibly,  through 
absolute  monopoly  of  the  labor  market,  to  tax  all 
labor  and  to  dictate  how  labor  shall  work,  under 
what  conditions  it  shall  work,  what  it  shall  be  paid, 
and  so,  only  indirectly,  dictate  volume  of  production 
and  prices  to  the  consumer. 

But  there  has  also  grown  up  largely  since  the  war, 
as  has  already  been  emphasized,  a  powerful  radical 
group  which  controls  labor  organizations  in  a  number 
of  industries  and  whose  growth  in  and  fight  for  con- 
trol of  the  so-called  conservative  unions  precipitated 
some   of   our   biggest   after-the-war   strikes.     This 

ia  177 


i  ?s        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

group  aims  definitely  and  admittedly  at  the  complete 
breaking  down  of  our  present  industrial  system  as 
the  first  step  toward  complete  control,  ownership,  and 
management  of  all  industry  by  these  unions. 

The  socialist  party,  which  is  the  chief  political 
expression  of  this  radical  industrial  policy,  which  in 
1900  polled  less  than  one  hundred  thousand  votes,  in 
1920  polled  a  million  votes  and  claims  several  times 
more  followers,  chiefly  unnaturalized. 

The  Amalgamated  Clothing  Workers  of  America, 
with  their  affiliated  organizations,  have  grown  to  a 
membership  of  over  four  hundred  thousand.  The 
breaking  down  of  the  present  industrial  system  is 
stated  in  the  preamble  of  their  constitution  as  the 
fundamental  motive  of  their  organization. 

The  leaders  of  the  steel  strike  in  19 19,  which  called 
out  three  hundred  thousand  workers,  were  radicals, 
and  the  organization  propaganda  in  connection 
with  the  strike  was  ultra-radical.  During  the  last 
few  years,  radicalism  has  gained  sufficient  influence 
in  the  United  Coal  Miners'  Union  with  its  five 
hundred  thousand  members  to  force,  in  the  way 
that  has  already  been  emphasized,  the  great  coal 
strike  of  191 9.  Even  the  American  Federation  of 
Labor  and  affiliated  Brotherhoods  with  some  four 
million  members  has  itself  become  so  vitiated  with 
radicalism  since  the  war  that  it  has  conspicuously 


Strikes  and  Radicalism  179 

departed  from  many  of  its  most  consistent  former 
policies. 

This  growth  in  radicalism  and  the  crystallization 
and  organization  of  the  radical  spirit  into  a  powerful 
fighting  menace,  which  to-day  has  a  permanent  hold 
on  many  of  our  great  industries,  and  which  is  in  a 
position  as  never  before  to  maintain  its  organization 
and  power,  is  the  result  of  strikes  and  the  possibility 
of  the  unrestricted  use  of  the  strike  weapon. 

Americans  in  general  have  always  been  amusedly 
skeptical  as  to  the  possibility  of  any  menace  to  them 
from  the  kind  of  men  and  the  kind  of  ideas  by  which 
radicalism  is  represented.  They  can  see  little  danger 
from  a  million  socialist  votes  or  even  from  several 
times  that  number  in  our  electorate  of  thirty  million. 
They  can  see  little  danger  of  the  possibility,  consid- 
ering the  whole  heredity,  history,  and  point  of  view 
of  the  American  people,  that  any  radical  revolution- 
ary program  can  ever  get  a  hold  on  any  numerically 
important  proportion  of  average  Americans — and 
they  are  unquestionably  right  about  this.  They  take 
it  for  granted  that  minorities,  no  matter  how  noisy 
they  may  become,  cannot  overthrow  our  industrial 
or  any  other  particular  part  of  our  social  organiza- 
tion, against  the  will  of  the  majority. 

While  the  sudden  tremendous  growth  in  radical 
activity  since  the  war,  and  the  tremendous  influence 


180        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

it  has  had  on  general  industrial  unrest  and  our 
widespread  strike  mania,  has  been  too  obvious  to  be 
denied,  the  average  American  has  looked  on  these 
as  merely  a  by-product  of  the  war,  one  of  its  un- 
avoidable costs  that  must  be  borne  and  paid  but 
which  will  work  itself  out,  then  disappear  as  sud- 
denly as  it  arose.  For  from  the  common-sense,  self- 
reliant  American  point  of  view  it  is  difficult  to  believe 
that  any  considerable  number  of  other  Americans, 
or  even  of  foreigners  subject  to  American  influences 
and  conditions,  can  continue  to  hold  and  act  on 
views  that  are  so  opposite  to  individual  initiative, 
practical  common  sense,  and  everything  else  that 
America  conspicuously  stands  for. 

But  such  optimism  completely  overlooks  three  very 
important  fundamental  facts  in  regard  to  the  rise 
and  present  strength  of  radicalism: 

First,  that  there  have  come  about  in  America, 
certain  fundamental  changes  in  the  environmental 
influences  to  which  millions  of  Americans  have,  for 
almost  a  generation,  been  exposed  and  which  have 
been  making  for  the  very  point  of  view  which  radi- 
calism expresses, 

Second,  the  fact  that  radical  leadership  has  for 
years  been  working  with  the  easy  tide  of  these  influ- 
ences and  had  already  built  up  an  immense  unorgan- 
ized following  which,  through  the  widespread  strike 


Strikes  and  Radicalism  181 

epidemic  after  the  war,  it  was  able  to  organize  into 
a  concrete  offensive  force, 

Third,  and  most  important  of  all,  the  fact  that  by- 
getting  a  bare  majority  control,  or  even  a  sufficiently 
large  minority  to  influence  the  control  of  our  great 
labor  monopolies  in  our  chief  basic  industries,  radi- 
calism has  become  a  power  and  a  menace  out  of  all 
proportion  to  its  mere  numerical  strength. 

It  is  an  axiom  of  psychology  that  both  individual 
and  group  points  of  view  are  the  products  not  only 
of  heredity  but  often  even  more  of  environment. 

America  was  settled  by  men  and  women  with  ideals 
and  ambitions  for  personal  liberty  and  personal  eco- 
nomic advancement.  Generation  after  generation 
the  undeveloped  portion  of  the  country  held  out  con- 
tinually new  incentives  to  ambitions  for  greater 
personal  freedom  and  wealth.  Pioneer  life  was  a  life 
of  realities  that  constantly  demanded  individual  self- 
reliance,  energy,  and  practical  common  sense  so  that 
both  heredity  and  environment  bred  and  empha- 
sized these  characteristics  in  our  race. 

Farming  scarcely  less  than  pioneering  demanded 
these  same  qualities  and  for  generations  some  three 
fourths  of  all  Americans,  through  a  life  in  constant 
touch  with  realities,  where  cause  and  effect  worked 
directly  and  obviously,  learned  from  first  hand  ex- 
perience of  themselves  and  their  neighbors  that  the 


182        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

one  road  to  success  was  through  individual  initia- 
tive, hard  work,  and  hard  common  sense,  while  their 
opposite  led  equally  directly  to  the  poor  farm. 
Moreover  our  early  immigrants  went  almost  entirely 
to  the  land  and  whatever  their  heredity  point  of 
view,  learned  through  first-hand  experience  in  the 
same  environment  the  same  simple,  practical  phi- 
losophy of  Americanism. 

As  America  grew  and  the  needs  for  transporta- 
tion, communication,  and  a  more  complex  indus- 
trial system  developed,  their  creation  offered  a  still 
newer,  bigger  incentive  to  individual  ambition.  And 
because,  just  as  with  pioneering  and  farming,  they 
offered  practical  problems  and  dealt  with  realities, 
they  rewarded  that  ambition  in  direct  proportion  to 
the  individual  initiative,  energy,  and  practical  com- 
mon sense  displayed,  and  thereby  emphasized  and 
idealized  these  characteristics  still  further. 

In  other  words  it  cannot  be  over-emphasized  that 
our  fundamental  American  characteristics  of  indi- 
vidual initiative,  energy,  and  practical  common  sense, 
in  no  sense  merely  happened  to  develop,  nor  were 
they  arbitrarily  chosen  but,  on  the  contrary,  they 
evolved  as  a  logical,  inevitable  result  of  environment. 

But  the  environment  to-day  in  which  a  continually 
larger  portion  of  the  American  people — particularly 
our  ever-increasing  foreign  element — live  and  work 


Strikes  and  Radicalism  183 

and  think,  is  not  only  different  from,  but  in  many 
ways  the  very  opposite  from,  the  environment  which 
created  these  characteristics  and  points  of  view 
which  we  call  American. 

America  is  no  longer  an  agricultural  nation.  Out 
of  twenty  million  families  only  seven  million  live  on 
farms  and  nearly  half  our  people  live  in  commercial 
and  industrial  centers. 

Now  modern  commerce  and  industry,  on  their 
creative  and  executive  sides,  offer  the  biggest  in- 
centives for,  and  are  themselves  the  most  intensive 
school  in,  developing  initiative,  energy,  and  practical 
common  sense  among  those  who  are  intellectually- 
able  to  measure  up  to  their  more  advanced  require- 
ments. 

For  great  classes  of  workers,  however,  modern 
American  industry  is  often  merely  a  great  compli- 
cated machine  with  most  of  whose  parts  they  never 
come  in  contact,  and  most  of  whose  operations  they 
do  not  understand  and  in  which  they  are  obviously 
merely  cogs.  This  great  machine  furnishes  such  a 
worker  his  place  to  work,  the  machinery  and  tools 
with  which  he  works,  the  material  on  which  he  per- 
forms some  single,  generally  small,  operation  which 
it  tells  him  to  perform  and  how  to  perform.  On 
Saturday  his  pay  envelope  is  just  as  automatically 
given  him. 


1 84        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

Back  of  his  work  are  real  problems — of  raw  ma- 
terial, transportation,  equipment,  financing,  pro- 
duction methods,  and  dispatch.  Beyond  his  work 
are  problems — of  finishing,  assembling,  marketing. 
All  of  these  are  just  as  practical  as  any  problems  any 
Americans  have  ever  been  called  to  face.  But  be- 
cause he  does  not  have  to  face  them,  these  problems 
have  little  reality  for  him,  and  he  probably  has  at 
most  but  vague  theories  about  them. 

Moreover  his  relations  and  point  of  view  toward 
the  problems  of  his  daily  living  are  to  a  large  extent 
the  same.  His  light  is  furnished  him  by  pressing  a 
button — his  water  by  turning  a  faucet.  His  food 
comes  to  him  in  packages  almost  ready  for  the  table. 
Even  his  sport  is  furnished  him  by  a  professional 
baseball  team.  There  are  a  hundred  and  one  real 
problems  upon  whose  practical  handling  by  someone's 
initiative,  energy,  and  common  sense,  each  of  these 
services  which  he  receives  almost  automatically 
depends.  But  they  do  not  require  the  exercise  of  any 
of  these  characteristics  on  his  part.  Because  there- 
fore he  himself  has  thus  no  contact  with  the  realities 
of  the  problems  of  supplying  what  he  wants  or  what 
he  gets  he  can  hardly  be  blamed  if  he  does  not  think 
of  what  he  wants  or  what  he  gets  in  terms  of  the  real 
problems  involved. 

Again  our  immigrants  during  the  last  decades  have 


Strikes  and  Radicalism  185 

come  almost  entirely  from  autocratic  countries  where 
for  generations  they  have  been  used  to  having  their 
lives  prescribed  and  regulated  for  them.  These  im- 
migrants with  this  hereditary  point  of  view  have 
gone  by  millions  into  our  industrial  centers  to  add 
to  the  forces  of  present  industrial  environment  in 
weakening  and  nullifying  our  typically  American 
individualism. 

Many  social  thinkers — favorable  as  well  as  hostile 
to  our  modern  industrial  system,  have  pointed  out 
this  tendency  of  modern  industrial  conditions  to 
break  down  individual  initiative  and  energy  of  the 
less  intelligent  and  less  strong-minded  worker.  But 
what  has  not  been  so  widely  pointed  out  is  the  fact 
that  it  is  psychologically  impossible  for  these  forces 
merely  to  eliminate  old  characteristics  and  leave 
their  places  negative  and  void.  On  the  contrary 
they  inevitably  tend  to  build  up  a  positive  opposite 
point  of  view. 

It  cannot,  therefore,  be  over-emphasized  that  if 
normal  American  environment  which  forces  the  in- 
dividual to  face  and  solve  his  own  problems  has  been 
able  to  create  the  stern,  difficult  virtues  of  initiative 
and  energy  to  the  point  where  these  virtues  become 
positive,  inherent,  national  characteristics,  a  change 
in  environment  to  one  in  which  most  of  his  problems 
in  life  are  solved  for  the  individual  and  their  results 


1 86        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

more  or  less  automatically  given  him,  must  far  more 
inevitably,  because  such  circumstances  work  with 
well-known  human  weaknesses,  tend  to  create  a 
positive  inherent  point  of  view  that  more  and  more 
of  the  things  he  wants  should  be  automatically 
given  him. 

In  exactly  the  same  way  the  fact  that  so  many  of 
the  chief  problems  of  his  life  are  infinitely  complex, 
and  cause  and  effect  often  so  remote  that  he  only 
touches  them  at  one  or  a  few  points,  also  tends  in- 
evitably to  befog  the  point  of  view  of  the  less  in- 
telligent worker  and  to  develop  the  easy  point  of 
view  of  accepting  or  building  up  merely  plausible 
and  self-interested  theories  about  the  problems  which 
affect  his  life,  quite  irrespective  of  the  practical 
possibilities  of  such  theories. 

Hundreds  of  after-the-war  strikes  had  their  whole 
psychological  basis  in  the  combination  of  these  two 
points  of  view.  Strikes  by  American  workmen 
against  the  action  of  foreign  governments — strikes 
for  four  times  former  wages  for  two  thirds  former 
work — strikes  for  wages  which  the  strikers'  own 
leaders  told  them  could  not  possibly  be  paid  so  that 
the  strike  was  foredoomed  to  expensive  failure — 
strikes  for  a  thirty-hour  week  at  a  wage  nearly  twice 
what  the  average  worker  gets  for  a  forty-eight  hour 
week — are  all  neither  more  nor  less  than  the  active 


Strikes  and  Radicalism  187 

expression  of  a  blind  conviction  on  the  part  of  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  American  workers  that  some- 
body somehow  ought  to  give  them  what  they  want 
irrespective  of  all  practical  considerations. 

This  is  the  point  of  view  which  radicalism  has  long 
since  seized  on,  capitalized,  encouraged,  and  on 
which  it  itself  has  developed  in  America. 

In  spite  of  the  widely  different  ultimate  philoso- 
phies which  the  different  schools  of  radicalism  theo- 
retically advance,  in  the  practical  work  within  their 
organizations — of  increasing  their  following  and  their 
hold  upon  it — all  radicals  invariably  operate  through 
the  easiest  channels  of  human  weakness,  and  all  of 
them  always  work  with  the  tide  of  environmental 
influences,  under  which  their  members  and  prospec- 
tive members  live.  Thus  for  years  all  radicals, 
irrespective  of  philosophical  differences,  have  been 
crystallizing,  giving  expression  to,  and  reiterating  this 
one  doctrine,  which  environment  and  human  weak- 
ness make  it  most  easy  for  the  less  intelligent  classes 
of  industrial  workers  to  accept  to-day,  namely: 
that  the  great  complex  forces  of  modern  life,  which 
in  some,  to  them,  vague  way  automatically  control 
their  lives,  should  in  some  equally  vague  way  be 
changed  to  influence  their  lives  more  favorably — to 
give  them  more  of  the  things  they  want. 

But  it  is  a  psychological  axiom  that  it  takes  ac- 


1 88        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

tion — the  stimulus  of  conflict — the  possibility  of  some 
immediate,  concrete  result — to  galvanize  general 
theories  and  points  of  view  into  dynamic  forces  and 
specific  organized  effort. 

Before  the  war,  radicalism,  because  it  was  specifi- 
fically  excluded  from  union  power,  had  no  authority 
to  call  strikes.  Normal  American  conditions  offered 
little  opportunity  for  other  concrete  action.  Up  to 
the  time  of  the  war,  therefore,  radicalism  was  only 
able  to  take  advantage  of  a  favorable  environment 
to  sow  its  seeds — to  crystallize  and  express  and  reit- 
erate in  terms  of  its  own  theories,  these  already 
emphasized  points  of  view  which  American  indus- 
trial environment  had  already  made  plausible. 

With  the  war,  however,  just  the  conditions  which 
the  radical  forces  needed  for  crystallization  and  or- 
ganization arose.  Hundreds  of  thousands  of  un- 
skilled new  workers  were  going  into  skilled  work  and 
into  the  skilled  workers'  unions.  The  demand  for 
labor  in  the  unskilled  trades  was  constantly  increas- 
ing. Wages  were  constantly  going  up  in  all  industry. 
It  was  the  great  opportunity  and  radicalism  seized 
it.  Working,  at  least  at  first,  among  the  less  skilled 
or  foreign  workers,  playing  upon  the  spirit  of  unrest, 
constantly  capitallizing  the  feeling  which  they  had 
long  been  catering  to  and  crystallizing,  that  some- 
body ought  somehow  to  give  the  workers  whatever 


Strikes  and  Radicalism  189 

they  wanted  irrespective  of  practical  considerations, 
and  by  constantly  preaching  strikes,  inciting  strikes, 
and  leading  strikes  for  such  aims,  radicalism  con- 
sciously and  persistently  worked  its  way  into,  and 
more  and  more  into  the  actual  even  if  not  the 
recognized  control  of,  our  great  powerful  established 
labor  organizations. 

On  November  4,  19 14,  William  Z.  Foster,  then  a 
well-known  I.  W.  W.  leader,  wrote,  "I  am  satisfied 
from  my  observation  that  the  only  way  for  the  I. 
W.  W.  to  have  the  workers  adopt  and  practice  the 
principles  of  revolutionary  unionism — which  I  take 
it  is  its  mission — is  to  give  up  the  attempt  to  create 
a  new  labor  movement,  turn  itself  into  a  propaganda 
league,  get  into  the  organized  labor  movement,  and, 
by  building  up  better  fighting  machines  within  the 
old  unions  than  those  possessed  by  our  reactionary 
enemies,  revolutionize  these  unions,  even  as  our 
French  syndacalist  fellow  workers  have  so  success- 
fully done  with  theirs. 

"(Signed)  Yours  for  revolution, 

"William  Z.  Foster." 

Within  four  years,  twenty-four  of  our  most  power- 
ful so-called  "conservative"  trade  unions  made  this 
same  William  Z.  Foster  Secretary  of  the  Special 
Union  Committee  and  Field  General  of  the  most 


190        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

important  trade  union  fight  that  followed  the  war. 
During  this  fight  Mr.  Gompers,  the  Brahma  of  so- 
called  "conservative"  trade  unionism  and  Mr.  Foster 
each  assured  the  Senate  Investigating  Committee 
that  their  point  of  view  on  labor  matters  was  essen- 
tially the  same. 

Less  than  one  year  after  this  Mr.  Foster  in  his 
book,  The  Great  Strike  (pages  255-265)  after  stat- 
ing that  the  time  is  now  come  to  strip  off  the 
camouflage  and  show  the  "true  nature  and  ten- 
dency of  trade  unionism"  says  boldly  and  frankly, 
' '  For  many  years  radicals  in  this  country  have  almost 
universally  maintained  that  the  trade  unions  are 
fundamentally  unrevolutionary.  If  they  were  to 
look  sharper  they  would  see  that  the  trade  union 
movement  is  traveling  faster  than  any  other  body 
towards  the  end  they  wish  to  reach.  .  .  .  Like 
various  other  social  movements  (trade  unions)  have 
more  or  less  instinctively  surrounded  themselves 
with  a  sort  of  camouflage  or  protective  coloring 
designed  to  disguise  the  movement  and  thus  to  pacify 
and  disarm  the  opposition.  This  is  the  junction  of 
such  expressions  as  '  a  fair  day's  pay  for  a  fair  day's 
work.'  '  The  interests  of  capital  and  labor  are  identical, ' 
etc.  In  actual  practice  little  or  no  attention  is  paid  to 
them.  They  are  for  foreign  {public)  consumption. 
.    .    .    It  is  an  indisputable  fact  that  the  trade  union 


Strikes  and  Radicalism  191 

always  acts  upon  the  policy  of  taking  all  it  can  get. 
.  .  .  They  are  as  insatiable  as  the  veriest  so-called 
revolutionary  unions.  ...  In  every  country  they 
are  constantly  solidifying  their  ranks,  building  ever 
more  gigantic  and  militant  combinations  .  .  .  and 
.  .  .  they  are  going  incomparably  faster  towards 
this  goal  than  any  of  the  much  advertised,  so-called 
revolutionary  unions." 

Already  in  England,  in  France,  and  more  conspicu- 
ously in  Germany  and  Italy,  radical  minorities 
through  the  control  of  the  great  organized  labor 
monopolies  are  not  only  continually  threatening  and 
constantly  handicapping  industrial  progress  and  pros- 
perity but  constantly  challenging  and  compromising 
the  will  of  the  whole  nation  through  the  threat  of 
continually  greater  and  more  costly  strikes. 

Whether,  then,  we  take  Mr.  Gompers's  statements 
at  their  face  value  that  radicalism  in  our  own  country 
is  merely  fighting  for  control  of  our  great  labor  monop- 
olies or  whether  we  believe  Mr.  Foster  that  Mr.  Gom- 
pers's statements  are  merely  convenient  camouflage 
for  "public  consumption,"  and  that  radicalism  has 
achieved  such  control  that  to-day  the  trade  union 
movement  is  actually  "more  revolutionary  than  the 
so-called  revolutionary  unions  themselves,"  the  fact 
remains  that  as  long  as  such  labor  monopolies  them- 
selves are  allowed  to  continue — as  long  as  some  few 


192        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

supreme  labor  leaders  have  the  power,  through  the 
unrestricted  use  of  the  strike  weapon,  to  shut  off, 
whenever  it  suits  their  interest,  the  whole  nation's 
production  of  coal  or  clothing  or  some  other  necessity 
of  life,  so  long  will  radicalism,  through  the  possession 
of  that  leadership  or  the  possibility  of  fighting  for 
that  leadership,  possess  the  single  most  powerful 
weapon  in  modern  social  life  with  which  to  perpetuate 
its  menace. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

STRIKING   AT   THE   ROOTS   OF  AMERICANISM 

In  1220 — in  what  is  known  as  the  Dark  Ages — 
when  Clan  MacAlpine  and  Clan  MacDonald  got 
into  a  dispute  over  the  fishing  rights  on  Loch  Lomond 
they,  as  a  matter  of  course,  immediately  gathered 
their  warriors  and  marched  against  each  other. 
Cattle  belonging  to  the  innocent  neutral  farmers 
along  each  line  of  march  were  slaughtered.  Harvests 
were  trampled  or  burned.  Neutral  villages  through 
which  they  passed  or  fought  were  pillaged  and  many 
innocent  villagers  killed.  Such  things  were  merely 
the  natural  and  unavoidable  incidents  of  a  system  of 
unrestrained  private  wars. 

In  1920,  when  the  carpenters  and  metal  workers 
get  into  a  dispute  as  to  which  is  to  have  the  preroga- 
tive of  hanging  metal  doors  with  wooden  cores,  they 
too,  as  a  matter  of  course,  immediately  strike  against 
each  other.  The  painters,  finishers,  and  many  other 
workers  have  to  stop  work  and  go  without  their 
wages  until  the  doors  are  hung.  Tenants  cannot 
move  in.     Costs  and  losses  pile  up  and  rents  must 

193 


194        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

later  follow.  Such  things  are  merely  the  natural  and 
unavoidable  incidents  of  unrestrained  private  strikes. 

In  the  early  years  of  the  fifteenth  century  the 
powerful  Dukes  of  Warwick  maneuvered  the  royal 
houses  of  York  and  Lancaster  into  the  bloody  Wars 
of  the  Roses,  which  brought  slaughter  or  death  by 
starvation  or  plague  to  over  a  quarter  of  all  the  com- 
mon people  of  England,  in  the  hope  that  one  of  the 
Warwicks  might  become  king. 

Within  the  last  two  years  of  the  twentieth  century 
certain  state  leaders  of  the  powerful  Coal  Miners' 
Union  maneuvered  the  national  leaders  into  the  great 
coal  strike,  which  meant  a  fight  with  the  national 
government  and  billions  of  dollars  loss  to  the  whole 
American  people,  in  the  hope  that  they  might  them- 
selves become  the  national  leaders  of  the  coal  union. 

In  1 62 1,  one  section  of  Eastern  Europe,  with  one 
religious  point  of  view,  believing  theirs  a  divine 
mission  to  bring  the  rest  of  eastern  Europe  to  the 
same  point  of  view,  ravished  the  whole  country  with 
a  war  that  turned  nearly  two  thirds  of  the  productive 
land  into  a  desert,  and  set  all  Central  Europe  back 
two  hundred  years  in  progress  and  prosperity. 

In  192 1,  according  to  the  announcements  of  big 
union  leaders,  there  is  to  be  a  drive  to  bring  the  great 
non-union  steel  industry  over  to  the  union  point  of 
view.     If  the  way  they  have  fought  for  the  same 


Striking  at  Americanism         195 

purpose  in  the  coal  industry,  in  the  steel  industry 
in  the  past  and  in  other  industries  is  any  criterion, 
we  can  feel  sure  this  struggle  will  cost  the  American 
people  hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars  more. 

When  Charlemagne  died  in  814,  and  the  last  great 
Roman  Empire  broke  up,  our  ancestors  faced  the 
problem  of  developing  an  entirely  new  political  or- 
ganization with  only  human  nature  as  a  guide  and 
motive  force. 

Great  robber  barons  held  the  land  and  warred  with 
each  other  over  every  petty  ambition  or  jealousy 
without  restraint  or  scruple,  till  no  peasant  in  all 
Europe  could  plant  a  crop  without  an  even  chance 
that  it  would  be  fought  over  and  destroyed  before  he 
could  harvest  it. 

To  defend  themselves  from  the  barons,  the  mer- 
chants and  workers  of  the  cities  built  strong  walls 
and  trained  or  hired  armies.  But,  once  safe  and 
strong  themselves,  they  began  to  use  these  armies 
to  settle  their  trading  jealousies  and  extend  their 
power. 

Even  the  peasants  in  desperation  built  for  them- 
selves safe  retreats  in  the  deep  woods  or  mountain 
caves,  and  banded  together  in  camorras  or  other  or- 
ganizations for  their  own  protection.  But  they,  too, 
once  safe  themselves,  fell  into  the  spirit  of  the  age 
and  soon  were  fighting  with  barons  and  burghers  and 


196        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

oppressing  other  peasants  as  unscrupulously  as  any 
robber  baron  had  ever  oppressed  them. 

The  Dark  Ages  were  the  dark  ages,  and  all  Europe, 
instead  of  producing  and  going  ahead,  bled  and 
starved,  was  plague  ridden,  and  stood  still,  chiefly  be- 
cause Europe  was  organized  by  groups  and  classes,  and 
all  these  groups  and  classes  only  schemed  and  thought 
and  fought  to  advance  their  own  interests  without 
a  conception  of  any  common  interests  or  rights. 

On  October  21,  1620,  while  different  religious 
groups  were  making  a  desert  of  Germany  in  order  that 
one  group  might  dominate  the  rest — while  Cavalier 
and  Roundhead  were  fighting  a  class  war  for  control 
of  England,  the  Pilgrims,  fleeing  from  government  by 
group  and  class  interest,  landed  at  Plymouth  Rock 
and  drew  up  the  Mayflower  compact,  dedicating  the 
new  government  in  America  to  the  interests  of  all 
the  people. 

On  August  29,  1920,  three  hundred  years  almost  to 
a  day  after  the  dedication  of  America  to  the  interests 
and  rights  of  all  the  people,  1000  B.  R.  T.  workers, 
reversing  the  vote  of  2000  fellow  workers  not  to 
strike,  and  by  their  closer  organization,  determination, 
and  threats  forced  12,000  of  their  fellow  workers  out 
of  their  jobs  and  wages,  and  a  large  proportion  of 
2,000,000  of  their  fellow  citizens  either  to  walk  to 
work  or  stay  at  home  and  lose  their  wages. 


Striking  at  Americanism         197 

On  July  4th,  after  the  Civil  War,  which  the  Ameri- 
can people  fought  to  keep  a  slave-owning  class  from 
dominating  industrial  and  political  life,  Lincoln 
reexpressed  Americanism,  in  terms  the  whole  world 
has  accepted,  as  "government  of  the  people,  by  the 
people,  for  the  people." 

On  August  31st,  a  year  after  the  World  War,  which 
was  fought  that  Europe,  too,  might  be  freed  from 
government  by  aristocratic  and  bureaucratic  groups, 
Patrick  J.  Shea,  the  local  union  official,  who  had 
argued  so  strongly  with  the  one  thousand  B.  R.  T. 
men  against  the  strike,  held  a  long  distance  telephone 
conversation  with  W.  D.  Mahon,  president  of  the 
Street  Car  Workers'  Union,  who  lives  in  Detroit,  in 
order  to  try  to  stop  the  B.  R.  T.  strike.  Probably  not 
one  per  cent,  of  the  two  million  citizens  of  Brooklyn, 
N.  Y.,  ever  heard  of  Mr.  Mahon,  who  lives  in  Detroit. 
They  certainly  never  elected  him,  or  directly  or  in- 
directly took  any  action  that  would  give  him  any 
right  to  represent  them,  or  speak  for  them,  or  have 
any  power  over  them.  Yet  Mr.  Mahon,  who  lives  in 
Detroit,  Mich.,  gave  arbitrary  instructions  over  the 
telephone  that  two  million  citizens  of  Brooklyn, 
N.  Y.,  must  continue  to  be  denied  one  of  the  most 
important  necessities  of  their  business  and  social  life. 

A  generation  ago  the  whole  American  people  were 
forced  to  unite  to  protect  the  public  interest  against 


198        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

a  special  group  of  "capitalistic"  robber  barons  who 
had  arisen  through  our  rapid  economic  development 
and  who  tried  to  put  their  special  group  interests 
above  the  common  interest  through  control  of  our 
economic  necessities  by  means  of  capitalistic  mo- 
nopolies. 

Yet,  within  twenty  years  of  our  hard  fought  and 
sweeping  victory  for  the  common  interests  of  the 
whole  people  against  the  special  interests  of  these 
modern  capitalistic  robber  barons,  our  modern  labor 
camorras,  organized  doubtless  for  necessary  self- 
protection,  are  to-day  making  a  more  ruthless,  un- 
scrupulous, dangerous  use  of  their  new  power  to 
promote  their  own  special  interests,  through  stopping 
our  economic  production,  than  any  trust  magnate 
ever  dared  attempt. 

The  anti-trust  movement  of  a  generation  ago  was 
in  no  sense  a  reflection  on  capital.  Except  among  the 
more  rabid  elements,  it  did  not  involve  any  reflections 
on  great  organizations  of  capital  as  such.  Its  whole 
attack  was  merely  against  the  type  of  big  capitalistic 
monopoly  that  was  seeking  to  get  control  over  the 
production  or  distribution  of  the  necessities  of  all  the 
people  for  the  purpose  of  using  that  control  for  then- 
own  selfish  interests  and  against  the  interests  of  the 
rest  of  the  people. 

There  is  no  question  that  American   Labor  has 


Striking  at  Americanism         199 

always  been  one  of  the  most  important  factors  in 
building  up  our  national  prosperity.  There  is  no 
question  that  labor  organizations  have  often  been 
among  the  most  important  factors  in  advancing  the 
interests  and  efficiency  of  labor,  and  so  the  interests 
and  prosperity  of  the  country.  There  is  no  question 
that  strikes,  as  often  the  only  weapon  of  ultimate 
resort  in  labor's  legitimate  competition  with  capital, 
in  many  instances  have  been  justified,  and  in  spite  of 
the  losses  they  have  caused  in  wages  and  non-pro- 
duction, have  often  proved  a  big  net  benefit  not  only 
to  labor  but  to  the  country  as  a  whole. 

But  when  as  at  present  the  great  majority  of 
strikes  are  obviously  and  often  blatantly  mere  weap- 
ons in  the  hands  of  powerful,  self-seeking  organiza- 
tions, or  of  factions  in  organizations,  that  are  used 
not  only  with  a  wanton  disregard  of  public  interest, 
but  often  in  a  calculated  and  ruthless  attack  upon 
public  interest  in  order  to  force  public  interest  to 
yield  to  group  chauvinism,  the  strike  to-day  becomes 
the  most  powerful  and  sinister  challenge  to  Ameri- 
canism that  the  American  people  have  ever  been 
called  to  face. 

Big,  conspicuous  strike  leaders  themselves  have 
had  a  great  deal  to  say  recently  about  Americanism. 
They  have  talked  loudly  and  frequently  of  the  in- 
herent right  of  any  free  American  citizen  to  work  or 


2oo        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

not  to  work  at  his  own  volition.  They  have  decried 
loudly  as  industrial  slavery  the  very  idea  that  any 
man  should  go  to  work  or  stop  work  at  the  mere 
volition  of  some  other  man. 

But  a  strike  as  has  already  been  pointed  out  does 
not  merely  consist  of  a  man's  working  or  not  working 
when  he  wants  to.  It  is  in  its  essence  a  conspiracy 
among  many  men  to  stop  work,  and  often  to  force 
other  men  to  stop  work,  always  in  order  to  injure 
and  coerce  someone  else. 

History  tells  us  that  the  robber  barons  "bleated 
like  lambs"  about  the  fundamental  right  of  self- 
protection  when  they  were  forced  to  put  their  private 
soldiers  with  which  they  had  fought  their  private 
wars  under  command  of  a  central  government  which 
represented,  at  least  in  some  degree,  all  the  people. 

We  all  of  us  remember  how  this  history  repeated 
itself — how,  when  the  question  came  up  of  the  right 
of  all  Americans  not  to  have  the  price  of  their  neces- 
saries of  life  artificially  manipulated  merely  for  the 
benefit  of  selfish  groups,  our  own  capitalistic  robber 
barons  cried  to  heaven  about  the  fundamental  right 
of  any  American  to  do  what  he  pleased  with  what  was 
his  own. 

The  bleating  of  the  robber  baron  about  the  funda- 
mental right  of  self-protection,  to  justify  or  cloak  his 
private  wars — the  cry  of  the  trust  magnate  about  the 


Striking  at  Americanism         201 

fundamental  right  of  any  man  to  do  what  he  wanted 
with  what  was  his,  to  justify  or  cloak  his  own  con- 
spiracies for  price  manipulation — the  wail  of  a  labor 
leader  about  the  fundamental  right  to  work  or  not  to 
work,  to  justify  or  cloak  a  system  under  which  he 
himself  commands  men  to  work  or  not  to  work  in 
order  to  promote  his  own  or  his  class  interests — all 
are  in  exactly  the  same  category. 

To  the  rest  of  us,  as  outsiders,  such  invocations 
and  magnifying  and  twisting  of  smaller,  less  impor- 
tant rights  of  individuals  to  try  to  justify  the  attacks 
upon  the  bigger,  broader  rights  of  all  the  people, 
merely  indicate  to  what  lengths  of  blindness  or  hypoc- 
risy the  selfishness  of  group  or  class  interest  always, 
in  every  age,  inevitably  leads. 

This  weakness  of  human  nature  that,  whereas,  an 
individual  who  rises  to  illogical  or  illegitimate  power 
may  have  the  self-control  and  the  discretion  not  to 
become  arrogant  and  flaunt  that  power,  the  group  or 
class  that  achieves  illogical  or  illegitimate  power  has 
invariably  throughout  history  sooner  or  later  become 
so  over-confident  that  it  has  recklessly  over- played  its 
hand,  is,  however,  very  useful  to  the  rest  of  society. 

American  public  sympathy  has  always  been, 
naturally  and  openly,  on  the  side  of  labor,  because  its 
struggles  were  so  frequently  against  the  same  big 
capitalistic  "robber  barons"  which  the  public  itself 


202        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

was  fighting  and  because  in  general  in  its  fight  with 
capital  labor  seemed  to  be  the  under  dog.  This 
sympathy  for  labor  has  naturally,  at  least  in  a  general 
way,  included  its  leaders. 

But  the  modern  labor  leader's  over-confident,  often 
almost  mad,  insistence  in  flaunting  his  utterly  un- 
American  doctrine  of  class  rights,  his  increasingly 
ruthless  and  open  infringement  of  the  most  basic  and 
important  rights  of  all  the  people  to  be  fed  and 
warmed  and  clothed,  in  order  that  some  small  group 
of  the  labor  class  may  be  able  to  draw  full  pay  for 
working  three  days  a  week  or  in  order  to  put  one 
group  of  men  instead  of  another  group  into  union 
power,  has  brought  the  whole  labor  question  under 
the  analytical  scrutiny  of  the  whole  American  people, 
and  this  scrutiny  reveals  with  a  clearness  that  cannot 
be  mistaken,  that  a  great  portion  of  the  modern  labor 
movement  is  to-day  seeking  to  build  up  a  selfish 
monopoly  power  in  exactly  the  same  way  the  capi- 
talistic trusts  sought  to  do  a  generation  ago,  by 
getting  a  control  of  the  necessities  of  life,  which  con- 
trol it  can  use,  and  in  many  cases  conspicuously  is 
using,  to  serve  its  own  selfish  interests  irrespective  of 
the  interests  of  the  rest  of  the  country. 

On  these  grounds  alone,  the  labor  monopoly  of  to- 
day is  in  exactly  the  same  category,  and  every  bit  as 
much  a  danger  to  the  interests  of  the  whole  American 


Striking  at  Americanism         203 

people,  as  were  the  capitalistic  monopolies  of  a  gen- 
eration ago. 

But  the  capitalistic  monopoly  was  incorporated 
and  responsible  under  the  law.  It  built  new  factories 
and  produced  more  goods  and  was  otherwise  chiefly 
a  constructive  force.  It  was  controlled  by  at  least 
able  men  who  realized  that  their  own  self-interest 
must  limit  their  disregard  of  public  interest.  The 
great  modern  labor  monopoly,  on  the  other  hand, 
has  contrived  to  get  itself  largely  exempted  from  re- 
sponsibility before  the  law.  The  strike,  which  is  its 
chief  weapon  in  serving  its  own  interests,  is  in  itself 
entirely  negative  and  destructive.  The  modern  labor 
monopoly  is  often  controlled  by  men  either  so  bigoted 
or  so  arrogant  through  their  rapid  rise  to  power  that 
they  overstep  all  bounds  in  flouting  public  opinion 
and  attacking  public  interest.  Moreover,  the  great 
labor  monopoly,  doubtless  for  these  very  reasons, 
has,  as  public  investigation  after  investigation  is 
more  and  more  clearly  showing,  become  a  hot -bed 
of  sedition,  bribery,  blackmail,  and  corruption  to  a 
degree  never  before  known  in  any  other  American 
institution. 

But  perhaps  the  biggest  indictment  of  all  against 
these  modern  labor  trusts  is  that  they  are  thus  bring- 
ing into  disrepute  conservative  and  constructive 
trade  unionism,  and  perverting  and  betraying  the 


204        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

great  mass  of  labor  which  is  depending  on  them  for 
guidance  and  leadership. 

Both,  therefore,  on  the  grounds  of  what  it  is  and 
what  it  does,  the  modern  labor  monopoly  constitutes 
an  open  challenge  as  to  whether  America  is  to  go 
back  to  the  class  and  group  government  of  the 
Middle  Ages  for  the  benefit  of  some  of  the  people  or 
is  to  stay  American  for  the  benefit  of  all  Americans. 


CHAPTER   XVII 

SUMMARY  OF  FACTS 

Brindel,  the  drug  clerk,  became,  almost  overnight, 
Brindel  the  millionaire  labor  czar  to  whom  thousands 
of  workers  paid  two  dollars  to  ten  dollars  a  week 
for  the  mere  privilege  of  working,  at  whose  command 
ten  thousand  men  would  quit  work  and  give  up  their 
pay  on  any  merest  sham  of  a  reason — primarily  be- 
cause of  his  particular  cleverness  in  handling  human 
nature — in  bluffing  and  cajoling  and  fooling  his 
followers. 

Messrs.  Lewis  and  Green  perpetuated  the  coal 
strike  for  weeks  in  spite  of  a  government  injunction, 
and  achieved  a  fair  measure  of  success  in  spite  of 
their  utterly  illegitimate  aims  and  methods,  through 
their  consummate  skill  in  muddying  the  waters  of 
facts  and  motives,  in  dividing  public  opinion,  and  in 
manipulating  and  cleverly  playing  off  every  opposing 
interest  against  every  other. 

The  professional  labor  leader,  because  of  the  very 
nature  of  his  job,  achieves  his  position  chiefly 
through  a  special  ability  to  get  and  keep  by  whatever 

?°5 


206        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

means  the  situation  may  demand,  the  confidence  of 
his  followers.  It  is  a  position  where  the  chief  means 
to  success  and  the  daily  stock  in  trade  are  a  knowl- 
edge of  human  psychology  and  skill  in  manipulating 
human  nature.  And  this  is  true  no  matter  how 
honest  and  sincere  the  individual  labor  leader  may  be. 
For  the  higher  labor  leaders  this  also  includes  an 
ability  to  gauge  and  manipulate  public  opinion,  to 
gain  its  sympathy  where  possible,  and  where  impos- 
sible to  cleverly  soften  and  divide  and  otherwise 
nullify  its  hostility. 

One  of  the  oldest  stand-by  methods  of  attempting 
to  deceive  the  public  as  to  a  series  of  unfavorable 
facts  is  to  choose  the  least  unfavorable,  and,  by  ad- 
mitting this  with  apparent  frankness  and  adding  to  it 
voluble  arguments  as  to  other  unconnected  favorable 
facts,  draw  attention  away  from  the  balance  of  the  more 
unfavorable  facts.  Wide  publicity  was  given  in  the 
fall  of  1920  to  an  estimate  that  the  cost  of  strikes  on 
only  one  series  of  items  amounted  to  eight  hundred 
million  dollars.  Mr.  Gompers  at  once  seized  on  this 
figure  and  featuring  it  as  though  it  represented  the 
whole  cost  of  strikes,  went  on  to  spread  wide  the 
sophistry  that  this  was  a  cheap  price  for  the  country 
to  pay  for  the  immense  permanent  benefit  these 
strikes  had  brought — just  how  he  failed  to  explain — 
to  American  labor. 


Summary  of  Facts  207 

Another  time-worn  method  of  attempting  to  mini- 
mize past  failures  has  always  been  to  try  to  pull 
public  attention  away  from  such  failures  and  make 
it  forget  them  by  getting  it  interested  in  some  sen- 
sational new  scheme.  It  was  working  on  exactly 
this  principle  of  popular  psychology  that  again,  in  the 
fall  of  1920,  when  present-day  labor  leaders  most 
needed  to  defend  themselves  before  public  opinion, 
they  began  a  widespread  campaign  for  a  conspicuous 
new  scheme  of  industrial  relations  cleverly  calcu- 
lated to  seem  to  be  similar  to  a  plan  to  which  many 
employers  had  already  given  approval — the  scheme 
of  union  labor  cooperation  in  industrial  management. 

In  proportion  as  the  many  possible  plans,  some  of 
which  are  already  under  discussion,  for  protecting 
the  public  and  the  great  body  of  labor  itself  from  the 
tremendous  costs  which  unrestricted  strikes  have  so 
conspicuously  proved  that  they  involve,  shall  be 
crystallized,  labor  leaders  will  undoubtedly  multiply 
these  efforts  to  thus  complicate,  muddle,  and  postpone 
the  issue.V  A  simple,  concise  summary  of  facts  as  to 
what  the  unrestricted  use  of  the  strike  weapon  has 
itself  proved  that  it  leads  to,  may  therefore  be 
correspondingly  valuable  as  a  preliminary  to  the 
consideration  of  some  of  the  possible  methods  of  af- 
fording the  public  and  labor  itself  such  protection. 
^First:  Strikes  are  not  only  costly  to  the  industry 


2o8        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

involved  or  merely  to  industry  and  the  country  as  a 
whole.  On  the  contrary,  they  are  a  direct  and  spe- 
cific tax  upon  the  average  individual.  They  have  in- 
creased the  price  of  his  vegetables  ioo  per  cent. ;  the 
price  of  his  suit  of  clothes,  $20  to  $30 ;  the  cost  of  his 
coal,  100  to  200  per  cent.,  and  the  price  he  has  had 
to  pay  for  many  other  things  for  months  at  a  time  in 
proportion. 

Second:  Strikes  cost  the  individual  just  as  specifi- 
cally and  even  more  disproportionately  and  perma- 
nently in  many  indirect  ways.  For  instance,  steel 
strikes,  coal  strikes,  railroad  strikes,  building  strikes 
tremendously  increased  the  cost  of  building  which 
not  only  raised  his  rent  in  proportion  but  caused  a 
shortage  which  raised  rents  still  further — in  New 
York  City,  an  average  of  thirty-two  dollars  a  month. 
j/ Third:  Strikes  often  cost  out  of  all  proportion  to 
their  size  or  the  number  of  workers  involved.  The 
strike  of  a  few  hundred  dock  workers  raised  the  price 
of  food  to  millions  of  families.  The  strike  of  two 
thousand  printers  affected  the  jobs  and  wages  of  a 
million  and  a  half  other  workers.  The  strike  of  only 
a  few  thousand  railroad  workers  at  a  time  for  a  few 
months  raised  general  prices  over  a  billion  dollars. 

Fourth:  Strikes  often  multiply  their  cost  to  the  in- 
dividual. The  coal  strike,  for  instance,  kept  a  hun- 
dred thousand  unnecessary  men  in  that  industry 


Summary  of  Facts  209 

and  out  of  other  industries  where  they  are  needed, 
and  so  not  only  raised  the  price  of  coal  but  the  labor 
cost  and  so  the  price  of  other  products  proportion- 
ately. 

S Fifth:  In  order  to  assure  victory,  strikers  have 
become  more  and  more  unscrupulous  and  labor 
leaders  more  and  more  skillful  in  thus  making  strikes 
disproportionately  costly  and,  in  order  to  bring  public 
pressure  to  bear  upon  the  employers,  are  deliberately 
calculating  these  strikes  at  the  psychological  time 
and  directing  them  at  the  strategic  points  that  will 
injure  the  public  most.  The  coal,  outlaw  railroad, 
dock  workers,  and  many  other  of  the  most  conspicu- 
ous strikes,  deliberately  attempted  as  the  chief  fea- 
ture of  their  strategy  the  greatest  possible  injury  to 
the  public. 
/  Sixth:  Strikes  injure  labor  most  of  all  for  they  not 
only  cost  the  individual  worker  as  part  of  the  public 
exactly  as  much  as  they  cost  other  individuals,  but 
every  strike  in  one  industry  that  holds  up  necessary 
material  from  another  industry  and  so  reduces  the 
amount  of  work  that  can  be  done,  or  transportation 
strikes  that  keep  men  from  getting  to  work  or  reduce 
their  working  hours,  cause  labor  alone  to  lose  all  its 
income  for  all  the  time  thus  lost. 

Seventh:  Sixty  per  cent,  of  strikes  in  19 19  caused 
a  primary  loss  of  134,000,000  working  days  and  a 
13 


2 to        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

secondary  and  indirect  loss  of  probably  twice  as  much 
more.  The  total  time  loss  that  can  be  laid  to  strikes 
in  19 19  must  therefore  have  approached  five  hun- 
dred million  working  days.  The  consequent  wage  loss, 
loss  of  production  at  factory  prices,  loss  of  the  vari- 
ous other  profits  in  handling  and  selling  this  produc- 
tion must  have  approached  ten  billion  dollars  or  as 
much  as  the  war  itself  cost  in  any  one  year.  Profit- 
eering cannot  flourish  and  speculation  cannot  raise 
prices  except  on  the  basis  of  a  shortage.  Shortage 
also  invariably  raises  prices  out  of  all  proportion  to 
the  actual  amount  of  the  shortage.  Strikes  were, 
therefore,  the  primary  and  unquestionably  the  largest 
contributing  factor  to  the  increased  cost  of  products 
which  followed  the  war,  and  this  increased  cost — from 
207  to  272 — thus  amounted  to  about  thirty  per  cent, 
on  a  total  national  production  at  ultimate  consumer 
prices,  of  over  a  hundred  billion  dollars. 

Eighth:  Professional  labor  leaders  openly  justify 
these  strikes  on  two  main  grounds — that  strikes  in 
the  past  have  been  the  chief  means  of  bringing  about 
labor  advancement,  and  that  every  American  has  an 
inalienable  right  to  work  or  not  to  work  as  he  himself 
sees  fit.  But  the  modern  strike  is  not  the  exercise 
by  an  individual  of  his  right  to  work  or  not  to  work  as 
he  sees  fit.  It  is  always  a  conspiracy  on  the  part  of 
many  individuals  to  stop  working  with  the  avowed 


Summary  of  Facts  211 

purpose  of  injuring  someone  else,  and  more  and  more 
with  the  avowed  purpose  of  injuring  an  entirely  inno- 
cent public.  In  addition,  in  a  majority  of  strikes  the 
conspiracy  involves  forcing  many  fellow-workers  who 
want  to  continue  to  work  to  give  up  their  so-called 
inalienable  right  to  work  or  not  to  work  as  they  see 
fit.  This  theory  of  an  individual's  right  to  work  or 
not  to  work  is  no  more  a  defense  of  the  modern  strike 
than  the  theory  that  an  individual  has  the  right  to 
sell  that  which  is  his  at  any  price  that  another  man 
will  pay,  is  a  defense  against  conspiracy  of  many 
individuals  to  raise  and  fix  prices.  It  is  equally 
illogical  and  unjustifiable  to  attempt  to  defend 
unscrupulous  present-day  strike  attacks  against  the 
public  on  the  ground  that  former  strikes,  merely 
against  an  interested  employer,  were  a  contributing 
factor  to  labor's  advancement.  Present-day  strikes 
can  be  judged  only  on  their  own  effects  on  labor's 
advancement  and  on  public  interest. 

Ninth:  Twenty-five  per  cent,  of  all  strikes  in  1919, 
involving  over  a  million  workers,  were  condemned 
by  professional  labor  leaders  themselves  as  being 
unjustifiable.  In  addition  to  this,  a  conspicuous  pro- 
portion of  other  strikes  had  expressed  aims  which 
make  it  impossible  to  set  them  down  as  anything 
except  mania  strikes,  due  purely  to  a  blind  reaction 
to  the  strike  epidemic.     Still  another  large  group  of 


212        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

strikes,  whose  number  is  being  constantly  increased 
by  judicial  and  legislative  investigations,  had  as  their 
only  real  objects  attempts  to  blackmail  and  graft. 

Tenth:  Only  thirty  per  cent,  of  the  strikes  of  19 19 
even  claimed  to  be  based  on  a  demand  for  increased 
wages,  and  only  forty  per  cent,  for  increased  wages, 
shorter  hours  or  both.  During  this  period,  however, 
demand  for  goods  of  all  kinds  was  so  great  and  a 
willingness  to  pay  almost  any  price  so  general  that 
employers  could  and  did  meet  practically  any  possible 
demand  as  to  wages  and  hours  in  order  to  get  pro- 
duction at  any  cost.  This  forty  per  cent,  of  strikes  in 
1919,  that  claimed  wages  or  shorter  hours  or  both  as 
their  cause,  were  thus  chiefly  one  of  two  kinds :  either, 
as  was  entirely  obvious  in  many  cases,  the  assigned 
cause  was  not  the  real  cause  of  the  strike,  or  as  in  the 
cases  cited  of  the  dock  strike,  the  B.  R.  T.  strike,  the 
steel  strike,  and  many  others,  the  demands  were  such 
that  because  of  special  and  peculiar  circumstances  it 
was  impossible  for  the  employers  to  meet  them. 

Eleventh:  The  last  of  the  more  important  types  of 
after-the-war  strikes,  are  those  consisting  of  the 
large  number  in  which  the  employers,  feeling  secure 
in  the  temporary  demand  for  goods  at  any  price, 
yielded,  and  as  is  always  inevitable,  added  the  extra 
cost  to  the  price  of  their  goods.  But  the  cost  of  the 
victorious  strikes  in  losses  of  production  plus  the 


Summary  of  Facts  213 

raises  in  wages  which  the  victories  brought,  proved 
in  many  cases  to  be  most  expensive,  not  only  to  the 
public  but  ultimately  to  the  workers  themselves. 
The  great  textile  and  clothing  industries,  for  instance, 
where  labor  gained  its  most  conspicuous  strike  vic- 
tories, were  the  industries  in  which  widespread  and 
lengthy  unemployment  first  began  to  appear  in  the 
summer  of  1920  and  in  which  wages  have  since  been 
most  reduced,  and  it  was  chiefly  the  high  prices  in 
these  fields  which  these  strike  victories  caused  that 
started  the  public  movement  of  refusing  to  buy  at 
such  prices — a  movement  whose  widespread  growth 
was  directly  responsible  for  the  similar  conditions 
and  wage  reductions  that  soon  therefore  had  to  follow 
in  other  industries. 

Twelfth:  The  chief  result  of  strikes  since  the  war,  in 
addition  to  their  cost  and  in  a  great  proportion  of 
cases  their  chief  aim,  was  to  advance  the  personal 
ambition  for  money  or  power  of  the  individual  labor 
leader  and  to  strengthen  the  hold  of  these  leaders, 
both  individually  and  collectively,  on  labor,  on  in- 
dustry, and  through  the  domination  of  industry  on 
the  country  itself.  Ninety-five  per  cent,  of  all  strikes 
in  the  building  trade  were  caused  by  fights  between 
individual  leaders  or  factions  for  money  or  power. 
The  coal  strike,  which  cost  the  country  a  billion  dol- 
lars, was  directly  caused  by  a  fight  for  control  and 


2H        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

management  of  the  eleven  million  dollars  a  year  in- 
come of  the  coal  miners'  union  which  itself  already 
has  a  monopoly  control  over  our  national  coal  pro- 
duction. The  steel  strike  of  19 19,  the  agitation  in 
the  steel  industry  which  is  already  being  prepared  to 
come  to  a  climax  in  the  summer  of  1921,  the  clothing 
makers'  strike,  all  represent  efforts  of  the  leaders 
of  organized  labor  to  obtain  control  of  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  other  workers  and  millions  of  dollars 
in  new  annual  dues  in  order  further  to  extend  their 
monopolistic  control  over  the  industries  which  pro- 
duce our  necessities  of  life.  And  between  and 
through  all  these  strikes  radicalism  was  constantly 
at  work,  stirring  up  labor  unrest,  instigating  and 
exaggerating  every  strike  possible,  and  constantly 
fighting  for  a  greater  and  greater  share  of  spoils  and 
control  in  order  to  extend  its  power,  crystallize  its 
organization,  and  put  its  hold  upon  labor  on  a 
oermanent  basis. 

^Vlt  is  extremely  valuable  that  the  average  man, 
including  the  average  worker  who  is  the  unit  of 
public  opinion  and  public  action,  should  realize 
definitely  and  specifically  the  tremendous  dollars  and 
cents  cost  which  our  after-the-war  strike  epidemic 
inflicted,  not  only  on  the  country  but  on  him  per- 
sonally, because  the  cost  represents  one  of  the  actual, 
already  proved  results  of  the  unrestricted  use  of  the 


Summary  of  Facts  215 

strike  weapon  in  the  hands  of  the  leaders  of  our  pre- 
sent-day, self-seeking  labor  monopolies.  But  it  is 
even  more  important  for  the  present  and  the  future 
that  he  should  also  realize  that  the  very  existence  of 
such  great  labor  monopolies,  already  controlling  the 
production  of  many,  and  constantly  striving  to  con- 
trol the  production  of  more,  of  our  necessities  of  life, 
is  itself  the  biggest,  most  permanent,  and  most  dan- 
gerous result  of  the  unrestricted  use  of  the  strike 
weapon,  because  their  very  existence  and  develop- 
ment along  present  lines  unquestionably  means  the 
constant  repetition  of  strikes  on  a  constantly  bigger, 
more  costly  scale,  or  else,  as  was  practically  the  case 
in  our  coal  strike,  public  submission  to  their  dictates 
and  will. 


CHAPTER   XVIII 

WHAT  ARE  WE  GOING  TO  DO  ABOUT  IT? 

One  group  of  twenty  men  working  on  the  con- 
struction of  the  Hotel  Ambassador  at  Atlantic  City 
during  the  summer  and  fall  of  1920,  averaged  $130 
a  week  wages  during  the  last  two  weeks  of  the  job. 
Yet  five  of  them  had  to  borrow  carfare  back  to  New 
York. 

On  this  same  job  the  contractor's  books  show  that 
masons  averaged  $65  a  week;  carpenters  and  steam- 
fitters,  $60  to  $70;  plasterers,  $90  to  $100;  scantle- 
men,  $80  to  $90,  and  elevator  men,  $150  a  week  for 
the  whole  construction  period.  Yet  at  the  end  some 
twenty  per  cent,  of  all  the  workers  in  many  of  these 
departments  came  to  the  management  to  borrow 
money  to  get  back  to  New  York. 

Not  only  much  of  labor  itself,  but  many  high- 
minded  men  entirely  outside  of  the  labor  ranks,  have 
long  believed  that  in  higher  wages  and  better  living 
conditions  lie  the  one  ultimate  solution  of  the  strike 
problem.  But  this  is  true  up  to  a  certain  point  only. 
Exorbitant  wages  pile  up  a  cost  of  production  which 

216 


What  Are  We  Going  to  Do?     217 

the  rest  of  the  country  cannot  stand.  Mere  higher 
wages  are  at  the  root  of  the  vicious  circle,  so  much 
discussed  recently,  which  so  keeps  raising  prices  that 
labor  has  to  get  higher  and  higher  wages  in  order 
actually  to  keep  even.  Mere  higher  wages  have 
proved  in  experience,  not  only  in  the  Hotel  Ambassa- 
dor case  but  in  hundreds  of  cases  during  the  war  and 
since  the  war,  to  lead  chiefly  to  an  orgy  of  spending, 
whose  only  result  is  to  leave  labor  no  better  off  actu- 
ally but  much  more  continually  discontented. 

Finally,  mere  higher  wages  do  not  touch  the  biggest 
and  most  basic  cause  in  the  whole  strike  situation — 
the  use  of  strikes  as  a  weapon  in  political  labor  fights 
and  ambitions. 

Even,  therefore,  if  the  rest  of  the  country  could 
afford  it  the  mere  raising  of  wages  does  not  promise 
any  adequate  solution  to  the  tremendously  costly 
strike  problem  as  it  has  existed  since  the  war. 

There  is  another  large  class  of  Americans  to-day 
who  do  not  believe  that  we  have  to  do  anything  at 
all  about  the  strike  problem,  at  least  at  this  time, 
because  the  strike  problem  has  already  shown  every 
indication  of  solving  itself.  Moreover,  they  argue 
that  the  very  laws  of  cause  and  effect  are  always  in 
the  long  run  bound  to  bring  labor  to  its  senses ;  and 
that  though  such  a  solution  may  be  extremely  expen- 
sive to  the  country,  it  is  so  much  more  expensive  to 


218        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

labor  itself  that  sooner  or  later  labor  will  be  forced  to 
realize  that  for  its  own  sake  it  cannot  afford  to  take 
advantage  of  special  situations,  as  it  has  in  the  last 
few  years,  and  mulct  them  without  regard  to  the 
interests  of  the  rest  of  the  country. 

There  may  be  much  actual  logic  in  this  point  of 
view,  but  such  a  solution  savors  entirely  too  much  of 
the  law  of  "tooth  and  claw  "  to  afford  any  progressive 
or  satisfactory  solution  to  any  problem  of  modern 
civilization. 

Nor  is  human  nature  as  a  whole  sufficiently  re- 
sponsive to  the  lessons  of  human  experience  to  permit 
us  to  depend  upon  such  a  remedy. 

There  is  no  question  that  American  employers, 
with  their  minds  bent  wholly  on  competition  in  pro- 
duction and  sales,  have  in  the  past  too  often  taken 
a  ruthless  advantage  of  labor  when  circumstances 
have  put  it  in  their  power  to  do  so.  There  is  no 
question  that  the  advantage  labor  has  taken  of  the 
strategic  position,  which  the  events  of  the  .last  few 
years  have  given  it,  it  has  largely  excused  and  justi- 
fied in  its  own  mind  because  of  much  of  the  past 
attitude  of  its  employers.  If  the  human  relations  in 
industry  are  to  go  on  only  on  the  basis  of  the  law  of 
the  jungle — merely  according  to  the  primordial  work- 
ing out  of  unmitigated  cause  and  effect — if  the  whole 
relation  between  employer  and  employee  is  to  con- 


What  Are  We  Going  to  Do?     219 

sist  of  a  watching  and  maneuvering  till  circumstances 
put  one  or  the  other  at  a  disadvantage,  in  order  that 
they  may  take  their  revenge  or  get  all  they  can  while 
the  getting  is  good,  there  is  little  hope  that  even  with 
all  its  greater  efficiency  our  present-day  system  of 
industrial  management  can  last. 

In  December,  1920,  after  the  bursting  of  their  get- 
rich-quick  bubble,  created  out  of  the  soft  soap  theory 
of  striking  for  what  you  want  instead  of  working 
for  it,  a  large  part  of  the  clothing  workers  had  been 
for  months  walking  the  streets.  In  the  new  wage 
negotiations,  therefore,  the  employers  obviously  had 
the  upper  hand.  The  employers  had  just  suffered 
tremendous  losses  because  of  these  hold-up  strikes 
and  the  public's  resultant  refusal  to  buy,  and  might 
easily  have  justified  to  themselves,  and,  perhaps,  to 
the  public,  a  policy  of  making  the  workers  pay  for  their 
own  mistakes.  Nevertheless  the  clothing  manufac- 
tures, while  they  did  naturally  and  perhaps  undiplo- 
matically refuse  to  go  on  with  the  system  of  wage 
settlement  which  the  workers  had  used  merely  to 
milch  them,  did,  on  the  other  hand,  voluntarily  offer 
the  workers  a  new  wage  arrangement  which,  under 
all  the  circumstances,  was  not  only  fair  but  generous. 

Judge  E.  H.  Gary  testified  before  the  Senate  Com- 
mittee as  to  the  policy  of  the  United  States  Steel 
Corporation  in  regard  to  wages :  ' '  We  have  intended 


220        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

to  more  than  keep  pace  with  the  increased  cost  of 
living,  which  we  have  done.  During  the  war  we  in- 
creased wages  eight  times,  always  voluntarily.  We 
were  influenced  by  the  fact  that  our  increased  earn- 
ings permitted  us  to  do  it  and  we  did  take  into  ac- 
count also  the  idea  of  giving  them  what  we  conceive 
to  be  the  employee's  share  in  the  [company's]  pros- 
perity .  .  .  which  we  always  do."  Moreover,  after 
the  great  19 19  steel  strike,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the 
strike  was  entirely  defeated,  in  spite  of  the  immense 
loss  it  caused  the  company,  wages  were  soon  again 
voluntarily  raised  "because  increased  earnings  per- 
mitted us  to  do  it."  Also,  because  of  the  company's 
regular  policy  of  giving  "the  largest  percentages  of 
increase  to  those  receiving  the  lowest  wages,"  the 
very  unskilled  and  radical  classes  of  workers  who 
alone  struck  received  the  largest  voluntary  wage 
advances. 

These  two  instances  are  typical  of  a  widespread 
attitude  on  the  part  of  the  big-minded  management, 
which  big  industrial  responsibility  is  more  and  more 
forcing  to  the  top.  The  emulation  of  this  kind  of 
management  offers  one  of  the  two  biggest  hopes  not 
only  for  a  satisfactory  solution  of  the  strike  problem 
but  of  the  whole  labor  problem. 

The  White  Motor  Company  is  to-day  paying  its 
labor  no  per  cent,  more  than  it  was  before  the  war. 


What  Are  We  Going  to  Do?     221 

Yet,  in  spite  of  this  fact  and  in  spite  of  the  much 
higher  cost  of  material,  the  price  of  the  White  truck 
is  only  ten  per  cent,  more  than  it  was  in  19 14.  The 
reason  is  directly  and  wholly  due  to  the  fact  that 
employer  and  employees  have  conscientiously  worked 
out  together  and  are  loyally  carrying  out  together  an 
increasingly  efficient  system  of  production  that  has 
resulted  in  a  tremendously  larger  margin  of  profit, 
which  they  are  sharing  fairly  with  the  public  and 
each  other. 

For  years  hundreds  of  large  industrial  concerns, 
with  large  numbers  of  regular  employees,  have  been 
striving  along  many  lines  toward  building  up  in  their 
own  organizations  better  relations  with  their  em- 
ployees and  cooperative  efficiency  systems  for  in- 
creasing the  profits  of  both  employer  and  employees, 
to  act  as  preventives  of  serious  misunderstandings 
and  strikes. 

As  a  part  of  this  general  effort  there  is  a  growing 
tendency  to  include  another  effort,  which,  because  of 
the  influence  of  the  worker's  fundamental  psychology 
on  the  whole  labor  problem,  the  author  has  long 
considered  of  paramount  importance,  namely,  the 
effort  to  bring  about  a  better  understanding  and  rela- 
tion between  the  worker  and  his  job.  The  influence 
which  the  monotony  of  his  job — the  fact  that  it  con- 
sists often  of  some  single  operation  which  the  worker 


222        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

has  neither  the  incentive  or  opportunity  to  conceive 
of  in  any  other  terms  than  the  mere  operation  itself — 
has  on  his  whole  psychology,  including  his  point  of 
view  towards  his  job,  his  employer  and  industry,  and 
life  in  general,  has  already  been  emphasized.  If,  how- 
ever, the  worker  whose  whole  job  consists,  for  instance, 
in  performing  some  single,  simple  operation  on  a  bar 
of  copper,  and  who  has  always  looked  on  his  work 
only  in  the  narrow  light  of  that  single  operation,  can 
be  led,  through  industrial  motion  pictures,  or  through 
lectures,  or  through  being  intelligently  transferred 
from  one  department  to  another,  or  through  any  other 
method  or  combination  of  methods,  to  realize  just 
how  his  single  operation  combines  practically  and  logi- 
cally with  all  the  other  operations  to  produce  a  great 
dynamo,  upon  which  the  speed  of  a  giant  battleship, 
for  instance,  or  the  power  to  irrigate  a  thousand  fruit 
farms,  or  some  other  great  modern  industrial  miracle 
depends,  there  is  the  strongest  probability  that  such 
a  new  conception  of  the  meaning  and  importance  of 
his  job — such  a  new  knowledge  of  its  vital  relationship 
to  the  big  creative  efforts  of  modern  life  will  give  him 
a  very  different  point  of  view  towards  his  job  and 
towards  industry  and  life  in  general. 

At  the  present  time  the  practical  value  of  many 
kinds  of  efforts  along  such  lines  is  receiving  much  more 
serious  attention  than  ever  before.    If  attempts  along 


What  Are  We  Going  to  Do  ?     223 

such  lines  are  practically  planned  to  go  far  enough  and 
spread  widely  enough,  there  is  no  question  that  they 
will  act  as  a  very  valuable  insurance  against  strikes 
in  these  industries. 

But,  in  the  first  place,  such  efforts  are  so  far  con- 
fined, and  many  of  them  from  their  nature  are  con- 
fined, to  industries  employing  regular  numbers  of 
skilled,  or  at  least  semi-skilled  workers.  Again,  all 
such  efforts  from  their  very  nature,  are  confined  to 
the  relationship  between  one  unit  of  management  and 
its  own  employees.  But  labor  unions  as  at  present 
constituted  include  under  the  same  organization  and 
control  the  employees  of  many  employing  units. 
Moreover,  it  has  been  the  constant  policy  of  these 
great  labor  organizations  to  act,  if  not  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  interest  of  the  labor  leaders  themselves, 
at  least  from  the  point  of  view  of  their  ideas  of  the 
interests  of  all  the  labor  in  their  organizations.  This 
means  that  they  frequently  call  strikes  in  an  entire 
industry  which  necessitates  the  striking  of  the  em- 
ployees in  many  plants  where  there  is  absolutely  no 
disagreement  between  employer  and  employees  and 
no  cause  for  a  strike.  This  means,  of  course,  that  in 
spite  of  anything  that  any  given  employer  may  do 
to  build  up  better  relation  with  his  employees  or  to 
institute  systems  that  will  increase  their  earnings,  he 
cannot  in  this  way  prevent  strikes  so  long  as  labor 


224        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

unions  are  organized  and  function  on  the  present 
basis  of  constituting  a  labor  monopoly  in  their  in- 
dustry. And  this  is  merely  one  more  illustration, 
from  a  different  angle,  of  how  the  monopolistic  char- 
acter of  the  modern  labor  organization  continually 
exaggerates  labor  trouble. 

Late  in  the  fall  of  1920,  organized  labor  itself  pub- 
licly presented  a  plan  purporting  to  represent  its 
ideas  as  to  how  strikes  could  be  minimized  through 
bringing  about  a  better  relation  between  employer 
and  employee.  This  plan  in  its  outward  form  bore 
a  very  distinct  resemblance  to  what  is  commonly 
known  as  the  "Senate  and  House  of  Representa- 
tives" plan  which  has  already  been  adopted  by  many 
employers  with  conspicuous  initial  success.  On  the 
basis  of  this  outward  similarity  of  form,  labor  leaders 
have  taken  the  position  before  the  public  of  assuming 
that  employers  cannot  reasonably  object  to  such  a 
plan. 

The  so-called  "Senate  and  House  of  Representa- 
tives" plan  constitutes  a  concrete  putting  into  effect, 
in  a  form  to  make  clever  psychological  appeal,  of  the 
new  popular  phrase,  "industrial  democracy"  as  that 
phrase  is  popularly  interpreted.  The  essence  of  this 
plan  is  the  formation  within  a  plant  of  an  organiza- 
tion composed  of  representatives  of  both  employers 
and  employees.     This  organization  commonly  con- 


What  Are  We  Going  to  Do?     225 

sists  of  a  President,  who  is  usually  a  chief  executive 
officer  of  the  firm ;  a  cabinet  or  senate  or  both,  gener- 
ally in  which  the  management  has  the  majority  vote ; 
and  a  house  of  representatives  composed  of  duly 
elected  representatives  of  all  the  employees.  The 
purpose  of  the  organization  is  to  decide,  subject  to 
certain  checks  which  its  own  composition  obviously 
imposes,  certain  types  of  questions  of  industrial 
management  and  relations  by  a  majority  vote. 
Novelty — the  primary  psychological  appeal  of  the 
identity  of  its  form  with  that  of  the  national  govern- 
ment— its  relation  to  the  widely  popular  phrase 
"industrial  democracy" — and  the  appeal  of  all  of 
these  to  the  employee's  feeling  of  self-importance, 
all  obviously  make  for  the  success  of  such  a  plan  at 
least  until  some  really  serious  conflict  of  opinion  arises 
between  employer  and  employee. 

Democracy,  however,  does  not  necessarily  consist 
in  control  by  majority  vote.  In  American  schools 
and  colleges,  leadership  and  management  must  from 
the  very  nature  of  the  case  be  determined  by  proved 
superior  ability  under  conditions  of  equal  oppor- 
tunity. The  French  army  is  said  to  be  the  most 
democratic  institution  in  the  world,  but  the  poilu 
does  not  vote  for  his  officers  or  to  determine  plans 
of  organization  or  strategy.  Again  the  democracy 
is  that  of  opportunity. 
15 


226        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

American  industry  has  always  in  the  past  held  to 
this  ideal  of  the  democracy  of  opportunity  rather 
than  democracy  of  counting  noses,  on  the  grounds 
that  all  human  experience  has  demonstrated — and 
only  socialists  and  Bolshevikis  actually  deny — that 
in  industry,  just  as  in  an  army,  efficiency  is  of  such 
paramount  importance  to  society  that  social  ends 
will  be  best  served  by  a  democracy  of  opportunity 
which  makes  control  a  matter  of  proved  fitness  rather 
than  a  democracy  of  voting,  which  makes  it  a  matter 
of  average  opinion.  The  election  of  army  officers  and 
the  determining  of  army  strategy  by  the  vote  of  the 
average  soldier  in  Russia  and  the  temporary  opera- 
tion of  the  clothing  industry  in  America  on  a  policy 
forced  on  it  by  the  average  worker's  determination 
to  try  out  a  theory  of  doubling  his  own  wages  for  a 
third  less  work  and  letting  the  public  pay  the  differ- 
ence, are  both  in  exactly  the  same  category,  and  both 
brought  results  which  no  nation  is  strong  enough  or 
rich  enough  to  continue  to  endure. 

The  American  people  and  certainly  American 
employers  have  no  intention  of  actually  putting  the 
management  of  industry  under  control  of  mere  ma- 
jorities of  the  workers.  The  fundamental  question, 
therefore,  arises  as  to  whether  employers  can  afford 
to  commit  themselves  to  the  principle  of  majority 
vote  in  industry  and  thus  start  such  a  dynamic,  self- 


What  Are  We  Going  to  Do  ?     227 

interested  force  as  labor  thinking  along  a  line  which 
the  employer  is  not  willing  to  carry  to  its  logical  con- 
clusion. Will  not  industrial  relations  be  advanced 
more  surely  and  in  the  long  run  more  rapidly  if 
instead  of  interpreting  industrial  democracy  in  terms 
of  "equal  vote,"  which  must  ultimately  lead  to  mis- 
understanding, employers  instead  openly  interpreted 
industrial  democracy  and  sincerely  worked  for  it  in 
terms  of  equal  opportunity  ? 

Organized  labor's  proposed  scheme,  however,  for 
giving  the  employee  a  voice  in  the  management  on 
the  basis  of  majority  vote  includes  the  plan  of  the 
"closed  shop"  under  which  organized  labor  itself 
controls  that  majority  vote  of  the  employees.  In 
other  words,  in  its  version  of  such  a  cooperative 
management  plan,  organized  labor  proposes  in  addi- 
tion to  its  present  domination  over  the  production, 
cost  and  efficiency  of  an  industry  through  the  mono- 
poly control  of  the  labor  in  the  industry,  to  acquire 
also  for  itself  a  similar  domination  over  more  and 
more  of  the  actual  executive  management  of  the 
industry. 

It  has  been  pointed  out  that  strikes  are  increas- 
ingly infrequent  in  the  building  trades  because  there 
the  labor  leader  completely  dominates  not  only  the 
labor  policy  of  the  industry,  but  the  making  of  prices, 
awarding  of  contracts,  and  other  purely  management 


228        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

functions.  It  has  also  been  pointed  out  what  the 
result  of  such  a  situation  has  been  in  the  exorbitant 
cost  and  consequent  limitation  of  building  and  in  the 
permanent  high  cost  of  rent.  A  voice  by  labor  on  a 
majority  voting  basis  in  questions  of  industrial  man- 
agement plus  the  "closed  shop"  would  result  in  ex- 
actly this  same  condition  in  any  industry  in  which 
such  a  policy  were  permitted.  It  would  unquestion- 
ably do  away  with  the  high  cost  of  strikes  but  only 
on  the  basis  of  a  far  higher  cost  of  getting  rid  of  these 
strikes. 

In  the  coal  strike  the  labor  leaders  openly  boasted 
that  they  did  not  need  seriously  to  consider  their  em- 
ployers— that  public  opinion  and  the  government 
were  their  only  real  opponents.  The  coal  strike  was 
also  called  on  November  i  st  at  the  beginning  of  win- 
ter because  that  was  just  the  time  such  a  strike  could 
hurt  the  public  most.  In  the  building  trades  the 
employer  seldom  thinks  of  resisting  the  big  labor 
monopolies.  He  yields,  pays  what  he  has  to,  and 
passes  the  whole  cost,  with  interest,  on  to  the  public. 
Moreover,  it  is  only  when  public  opinion  has  been 
aroused  and  some  public  action  taken,  as  in  the  Lock- 
wood  investigation  and  the  resultant  prosecutions, 
that  such  a  situation  can  be  even  temporarily  or 
partially  remedied. 

And  what  is  true  of  the  coal  industry,  and  the 


What  Are  We  Going  to  Do  ?     229 

building  industry  is  true  to  a  greater  or  less  degree  in 
the  bulk  of  industries  in  which  strikes  have  proved  so 
costly  to  the  whole  country — namely,  that  not  only 
does  the  public  suffer  most  from  strikes,  but  the 
public  alone,  from  the  very  nature  of  the  situation, 
can  protect  itself  from  the  consequences  of  these 
strikes. 

That  strike  can  no  longer  be  regarded  merely  in  the 
light  of  conflicts  between  capital  and  labor,  but  be- 
cause of  the  tremendous  costs  they  are  imposing  on 
the  public  are  of  vital  public  concern — that  from 
the  very  nature  of  the  situation  the  public  alone  is 
able  adequately  to  protect  itself  against  these  losses, 
and  that  the  public  has  a  right  so  to  protect  itself — is 
to-day  becoming  more  and  more  widely  recognized. 

As  a  result  of  the  flagrant  abuse  of  the  strike 
weapon  and  the  tremendous  losses  which  that  abuse 
has  inflicted  on  the  whole  public,  the  city  of  Los 
Angeles  has,  by  amendment  to  its  charter,  which 
cannot  be  changed  except  by  a  two-thirds  vote  of  the 
whole  people,  established  the  open  shop  principle. 

Under  the  leadership  of  Governor  Allen,  the  State  of 
Kansas  has  established  a  system  of  industrial  courts 
having  complete  jurisdiction  over  industrial  disputes 
that  involve  public  interest.  The  decision  of  such 
courts  is  final,  and  strikes  in  such  cases  are  punishable 
as  crimes. 


230        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

On  the  face  of  it  an  industrial  court,  which  shall 
adjudicate  controversies  between  employer  and  em- 
ployee much  as  an  ordinary  court  adjudicates  con- 
troversies between  other  individuals  or  business 
interests,  seems  absolutely  logical  and  fair  and  in 
keeping  with  all  the  developments  of  progress  and 
civilization. 

Labor,  however,  at  once  points  out,  and  is  right  in 
pointing  out,  that  controversies  between  it  and  its 
employers  are  essentially  different  from  ordinary 
controversies  at  law,  in  that  they  constitute  labor's 
means  of  competition.  Competition  is  the  basis  not 
only  of  all  modern  industrial  progress,  but  to  a  large 
extent  of  all  progress.  The  law  may  prevent  unfair 
competition  and  courts  perform  a  legitimate  func- 
tion in  adjudicating  cases  where  unfair  competition 
is  claimed;  but,  far  from  being  agencies  for  stopping 
competition  in  general,  the  courts  in  recent  years  have 
been  one  of  the  chief  agencies  in  enforcing  competi- 
tion. 

Now,  labor  unquestionably  has  an  exaggerated  idea 
as  to  the  extent  to  which  it  is  inherently  a  competitor 
of  capital.  It  has  been  one  of  the  greatest  lessons 
that  business  as  a  whole  has  learned  in  the  last  gener- 
ation that  it  is  entirely  unprofitable  to  both  sides  to 
carry  competition  too  far,  and  modern  business  has 
gained  tremendously  since  it  has  realized  that  by 


What  Are  We  Going  to  Do?     231 

co6perating  with  its  competitors  up  to  a  certain  point, 
through  chamber  of  commerce,  trade  associations, 
and  other  such  cooperative  organizations,  it  can  often 
so  enlarge  markets  and  increase  business  as  a  whole 
that  the  individual  competitor  is  better  off  with  his 
share  of  the  new  larger  market  than  he  would  have 
been  even  with  a  monopoly  of  the  old  market.  In 
other  words,  the  most  successful  modern  business 
practice  is  that  of  cooperating  with  competitors  and 
rivals  in  improving  business  conditions  and  enlarging 
markets  and  then  competing  with  them  for  the  share 
of  the  profits  in  those  better  conditions  and  larger 
markets. 

In  the  same  way,  employer  and  employee  have  a 
very  big  common  interest  in  increasing  their  mutual 
production,  and  labor  both  can  and  must  realize  that 
there  is  every  incentive  for  cooperation  in  thus  in- 
creasing the  amount  of  profit  that  can  be  divided  up. 
But  it  is  equally  true  that  there  is  and  must  be  an 
inherent  competition  between  employer  and  em- 
ployee over  the  division  of  these  profits.  Contro- 
versies between  employers  and  employees  are  the 
methods  of  such  competition,  and  strikes  are,  in  the 
last  analysis,  very  frequently  the  only  adequate 
weapon  labor  has  in  this  competition. 

'Hie  industrial  court,  therefore,  which  would  settle 
controversies  between  capital  and  labor,  and  whose 


232        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

judgment  would  be  final,  while  it  would  undoubtedly 
eliminate  strikes,  would  by  that  very  fact  practically 
eliminate  the  very  basis  of  competition  between  capi- 
tal and  labor  and  substitute  paternalistic  regulation 
for  this  free  competition. 

Moreover,  competition  between  capital  and  labor 
is  chiefly  over  the  question  of  wages  or  working  hours, 
both  paramount  factors  in  cost  of  production  and  so 
in  determining  prices.  Courts,  therefore,  which 
would  arbitrarily  settle  such  disputes  would  by  that 
very  fact  to  a  large  extent  arbitrarily  regulate  and 
fix  prices. 

Up  to  a  certain  point  and  under  certain  conditions 
the  substitution  of  arbitrary  regulation  for  free  com- 
petition, including  the  fixing  of  prices,  is  entirely  in 
keeping  with  modern  economic  development.  For 
years  great  corporations  which  have  controlled  im- 
portant necessities  of  life  have  been  especially  classi- 
fied as  public  service  corporations,  and  because  of  the 
special  degree  of  public  injury  which  would  result 
through  any  mismanagement  have  been  largely 
taken  out  of  the  field  of  ordinary  business  competition 
and  surrounded  by  both  special  privileges  and  special 
restrictions,  including  the  fixing  of  prices  at  which 
they  shall  sell  their  service  or  product.  The  man 
to-day  who  puts  his  money  into  such  an  enterprise 
does  so  with  full  knowledge  of  these  conditions. 


What  Are  We  Going  to  Do  ?     233 

There  is  no  reason  why  in  the  same  way,  because  of 
the  special  injury  to  the  public  through  strikes  in 
such  fields,  that  labor  in  such  industries  should  not 
be  granted  special  privileges  and  also  be  specially 
restricted  as  regards  strikes. 

But  strikes  in  the  building  industry,  in  the  coal 
industry,  in  the  steel  industry,  and  in  many  other 
industries  which  have  never  been  specially  classified 
as  public  service  have  piled  up  tremendous  costs  to 
the  public.  To  put  even  such  industries  under  this 
special  classification  and  withdraw  them  from  the  field 
of  ordinary  business  competition  would  involve  un- 
limited complications.  The  Kansas  Industrial  Court 
for  instance,  has  ruled  that  a  miller,  even  though  his 
business  is  largely  shut  down  because  of  dull  times, 
must,  nevertheless,  pay  wages  to  his  "skilled  and  faith- 
ful ' '  employees.  How  long  must  he  continue  to  do  this  ? 
If  his  business  is  shut  down  to  the  extent  that  he  is 
making  no  money,  must  he  borrow  money  for  this  pur- 
pose ?  What  constitutes  being  a  '  'skilled  and  faithful ' ' 
employee  ?  The  tribunal  which  determines  such  ques- 
tions is  practically  taking  over  the  executive  functions 
of  business.  To  withdraw  the  relations  of  capital 
and  labor  in  all  fields  which  affect  public  interest 
from  a  competitive  basis  and  arbitrarily  determine  by 
judicial  decision  such  questions  as  these  for  all  busi- 
ness, which  would  to  a  large  extent  include  the  arbi- 


234        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

trary  fixing  of  all  prices  to  the  public,  would  be  so 
radical  that  only  the  fact  that  it  alone  could  protect 
public  interest  would  warrant  such  a  step. 

Canada  has  gone  a  considerable  distance  along 
these  lines,  but  has  carefully  avoided  going  to  ex- 
tremes, in  the  so-called  Mackenzie-King  plan  for 
adjusting  labor  disputes.  Under  this  plan,  strikes 
and  lockouts  are  prohibited  until  the  matter  under 
dispute  has  been  passed  upon  by  an  official  tribunal. 
This  official  tribunal  consists  of  three  judges — one 
chosen  by  the  employer,  one  by  the  employees,  and 
one  by  the  government.  The  fact  that  the  judges 
are  specially  chosen  in  each  controversy  guards 
against  their  being  influenced  by  political  considera- 
tions which  might  be  the  case  with  a  permanent 
court.  These  judges  have  full  power  to  subpoena 
witnesses  and  compel  testimony.  They  cannot  en- 
force a  verdict  but  they  make  a  complete  public 
report  of  the  results  of  the  controversy  and  public 
opinion  is  depended  on  to  do  the  rest.  The  plan  is 
simple,  obvious,  and  perfectly  fair  and,  although  its 
penal  provisions  have  been  frequently  disregarded,  in 
general  it  has  worked  in  Canada  with  great  efficiency. 
It  could  be  adopted  to  American  conditions  quickly 
with  a  minimum  of  complications,  and  it  is  hard  to 
see  on  what  grounds  labor  itself  could  logically  op- 
pose it. 


What  Are  We  Going  to  Do  ?     235 

Nevertheless,  leaders  of  organized  labor  are  fight- 
ing all  such  movements  as  these  with  every  energy 
and  every  weapon  they  can  command  because  their 
adoption  would  unquestionably  interfere  with  their 
domination  by  putting  an  end  to  strikes  which  are 
called  merely  to  serve  their  own  labor-political 
ambitions. 

The  trusts  in  their  hey  day  were  strongly  en- 
trenched in  politics,  and  it  took  the  united  efforts 
of  the  whole  people  twenty  years  to  get  adequate 
protection  against  the  more  unjust  forms  of  trust 
practice.  Not  only  is  organized  labor  strongly  en- 
trenched politically  but  it  commands  such  a  numeri- 
cal voting  power  that  this  hostility  will  make  the 
widespread  adoption  of  such  revolutionary  plans  as 
these  extremely  difficult  and  particularly  difficult  in 
the  great  labor  sections  where  some  remedy  is  most 
needed. 

Nothing  would  suit  the  professional  labor  leader's 
purposes  better  than  to  get  the  public  into  a  general 
discussion  of  some  such  strike  remedy  which  would  in- 
volve the  adoption  of  new  principles  and  the  creation 
of  new  government  machinery.  For  such  a  situa- 
tion would  give  the  labor  leader  just  the  opportunity 
he  needs  to  dissipate  the  present  clear-cut  public  con- 
viction as  to  the  high  cost  of  strikes  and  as  to  his 
responsibility  for  them,  into  a  mist  of  vague  argu- 


236        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

ments  which   he   could   complicate  and  draw  out 
indefinitely. 

What  the  present  situation  calls  for  is  a  remedy, 
if  possible,  so  simple  and  direct  and  obvious  that  it 
can  command  immediate,  widespread  assent.  There 
are  several  such  remedies  available. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

MAKE  LABOR  OBEY   THE   LAW 

The  great  majority  of  American  business  organiza- 
tions have  laid  their  own  foundations  and  have  arisen 
strong  and  straight  by  their  own  initiative  and  energy. 

But  the  American  people  have  in  the  past  exempted 
certain  types  of  business  from  this  fundamental 
business  law  of  self  sufficiency  which  all  ordinary 
businesses  had  to  obey,  and  have  given  these  special 
classes  of  business  special  rights  and  privileges — 
land  grants  and  bonuses  to  our  railroads — free 
franchises,  the  special  right  of  eminent  domain  and 
public  credit  to  our  municipal  corporations — special 
tariff  considerations  and  protection  to  our  "infant 
industries."  And  almost  without  exception  all  the 
scandals  and  public  problems  of  American  business — 
"buccaneering  finance" — the  alliance  between  "big 
business  and  corrupt  politics" — watered  stock,  secret 
rebates,  trusts — all  have  developed  in  these  specially 
privileged  businesses  and  have  resulted  directly 
because  of  these  special  privileges  and  exemptions. 

The  social  organization  of  the  middle  ages  with  its 

m 


238        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

robber  barons,  its  walled  and  armed  cities  of  artisans 
and  merchants,  its  camorras  of  peasants — all  un- 
subject  to  any  common  law  and  all  fighting  to  in- 
crease their  own  special  rights  and  privileges,  led 
inevitably,  as  has  already  been  emphasized,  to  what 
is  commonly  referred  to  as  the  "dark  ages"  of  all 
history.  And  whether  we  go  backward  or  forward 
in  history — to  the  Praetorians  or  Janissaries  of 
ancient  empires  or  to  the  Junkers  of  modern  Ger- 
many— whether  we  consider  the  individual  "male- 
factor of  great  wealth"  or  the  whole  trust  system  of 
a  generation  ago — or  the  individual  labor  leader  or 
the  great  organized  labor  monopolies  of  to-day,  the 
same  rule  holds,  namely:  that  the  power  which  is 
not  subject  to  the  same  law  to  which  all  ordinary 
society  is  subject,  but  which  is  assisted  to  develop 
by  special  privilege  or  special  exemption  outside  of 
ordinary  law  inevitably  continues  more  and  more  to 
center  its  attention  and  put  its  chief  reliance  upon 
these  special  rights  and  exemptions — to  fight  for  more 
and  more  special  rights  and  more  and  more  exemp- 
tions from  ordinary  law,  and  to  think  and  act,  and  so 
become  more  and  more  lawless. l 

1  Theodore  Roosevelt  spoke  frequently  of  the  high  personal 
integrity  and  absolute  personal  sincerity  of  certain  flagrant  repre- 
sentatives of  plutocratic  special  privilege.  But  the  social  point  of 
view  of  these  men — developed  by  the  whole  heredity  and  environ- 
ment of  their  established  system  of  "special  privilege" — he  con- 


Make  Labor  Obey  the  Law      239 

The  whole  modern  labor  system  is  founded  on,  and 
has  developed  logically  and  inevitably  to  its  present 
monopolisitic  form  and  with  its  present  predatory 
point  of  view  because  it  is  founded  on  two  kinds  of 
special  exemptions  and  privileges.  One  of  these  is  a 
group  of  special  social  exemptions  and  privileges 
which  no  other  class  enjoys — the  other  is  a  special 
group  of  legal  exemptions,  which  gives  labor  the 
privilege  of  operating  outside  certain  laws  which 
restrict  and  regulate  all  other  classes. 

For  hundreds  of  years  during  the  middle  ages  all 
men  had  to  belong  to  one  established  religious  organ- 
ization and  subscribe  to  one  established  set  of  tenets 

demned   utterly   and  their  consequent   public   acts  lie  ruthlessly 
fought. 

In  exactly  the  same  way  there  is  no  question  of  the  sincerity  of 
some  of  our  great  labor  leaders.  But  the  possible  personal  sincer- 
ity of  men  whose  blind  adherence  to  a  labor  monopolistic  system 
could  justify  to  themselves,  merely  for  the  advancement  of  that 
system,  the  raising  of  the  price  cf  coal  fifteen  dollars  a  ton  to  the  whole 
public,  can  no  more  save  such  a  point  of  view,  as  such,  from  utter  con- 
demnation than  the  possible  personal  sincerity  of  the  men  whose 
blind  belief  in  a  plutocratic  monopoly  system,  which  led  them  to 
raise  the  price  of  oil  five  cents  a  gallon  to  the  whole  people,  did  save 
them  and  their  system  from  utter  condemnation  and  drastic  modi- 
fication. The  very  fact  that  it  is  possible  to  conceive  of  personal 
sincerity  in  either  case  only  proves  again  how  reason  as  well  as  acts, 
which  begins  with  special  privilege  and  continues  outside  of  ordinary 
law,  inevitably  tends  to  a  greater  and  greater  unconscious  perversion 
of  point  of  view.  Moreover,  there  is  no  question  that  all  heredity 
and  environment  in  our  modern  system  of  labor  monopoly,  even  more 
than  in  our  past  system  of  plutocratic  monopoly,  has  tended  to  bring 
into  leadership  men  of  whose  sincerity,  the  less  said  the  better. 


240        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

or  be  branded  as  "heretics"  and  refused  the  ordinary 
opportunity  of  earning  their  living  or  pursuing  their 
normal  social  life.  Through  hundreds  of  years  our 
forefathers  fought  and  died  for  the  privilege  of  joining 
or  forming  the  kind  of  religious  organization  they 
chose,  and  subscribing  to  the  kind  of  tenets  which 
their  own  conscience  and  intelligence  dictated.  Our 
own  country  in  a  peculiar  way  was  founded  as  a 
refuge  for  those  who  rebelled  against  being  forced  to 
become  members  of  established  organizations  or 
subscribe  to  fixed  theories  as  to  matters  which  per- 
tain to  their  own  interest  and  intelligence.  From  the 
beginning  of  our  history,  it  has  perhaps  been  the 
most  fundamental  of  all  American  principles  that  no 
man  shall  be  forced  to  join  any  special  organization 
or  subscribe  to  any  fixed  belief  in  order  to  enjoy  all 
the  normal  privileges  in  his  pursuit  of  life,  liberty,  and 
happiness.  The  laboring  man  in  his  relation  to  the 
labor  union  and  in  pursuit  of  his  job  is  the  only  ex- 
ception to  this  basic  American  principle  which  has 
been  permitted  to  exist  in  American  life. 

The  first  fundamental  principle  on  which  the  mod- 
ern labor  organization  is  founded  is  that  in  order  to 
get  a  job  and  continue  to  work,  the  laboring  man 
must  join  the  union — that  if  he  does  not  join  this 
established  organization  and  subscribe  to  its  fixed 
tenets,  he  shall  be  branded  as  a  "scab"  and  shall  be 


Make  Labor  Obey  the  Law      241 

denied  all  opportunity  of  earning  his  living  for  himself 
and  his  family. 1 

Again  it  has  from  earliest  times  been  one  of  the 
most  fundamental  principles  of  common  law  that 
men  shall  not  be  allowed  to  conspire  to  injure 
other  men — that  acts  which  are  done  through  a  con- 
spiracy shall  be  judged  on  a  different  basis  than 
when  the  same  acts  are  done  by  individuals  on  the 
ground  that  a  combination  of  many  men  to  do  an 
injury  always  increases  the  possibility  of  injury  in 
geometric  ratio.  Therefore,  the  law  has  frequently 
condemned  conspiracies  to  do  acts  which,  even  in 
themselves  are  not  wrong,  but  which  because  they 
are  done  by  many  men,  may  bring  disproportion- 
ate injury.  Moreover,  because  of  these  facts  the 
whole  tendency  of  the  law  is  to  become  more  and 
more  strict  in  interpreting  and  condemning  conspir- 
acies of  all  kinds  among  all  classes  of  society — except 
by  organized  labor. 

The  second  fundamental  principle  on  which  the 
modern  labor  organization  is  founded  is  that  it  is 

'"With  the  rapid  extention  of  trade  unions,  the  tendency  is 
towards  growth  of  compulsory  membership  in  them  and  the  time 
will  doubtless  come  when  this  inclusion  will  become  general." — John 
Mitchell. 

This  is  demanded  by  the  unions — that  the  shop  shall  be  closed 
against  all  employees  who,  not  already  belonging  to  the  union  of  their 
trade,  refuse  to  join  it. — Bridgemen's  Magazine,  Dec,  1905.     Official 
organ  Iron  Workers'  Union. 
16 


242        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

exempted  from  this  otherwise  universal  law  against 
conspiracy,  in  that  its  members  are  granted  the 
special  right  and  privilege  of  conspiring  to  injure  their 
employer  irrespective  of  the  extent  of  that  injury. ' 

The  American  people  has  tacitly  acquiesced  in  the 
assumption  by  organized  labor  of  the  first  of  these 
special  privileges  and  exemptions  of  forcing  men  to 
join  a  union,  and  legally  granted  labor  the  second 
special  privilege  of  exemption  from  the  otherwise 
universal  law  against  conspiracy — both  on  exactly  the 
same  grounds  that  it  granted  the  special  rights  of 
public  lands  and  bonuses  to  railroads,  perpetual 
franchises  to  municipal  traction  companies,  and 
special  exemptions  and  protection  under  the  tariff 
to  our  embryo  trusts;  namely,  because  the  public 
believed  that  these  special  privileges  and  exemptions 

1  A  leading  authority  on  labor  law  states  the  exact  legal  status  of 
the  strike  as  follows : 

"Where  organized  labor  is  concerned,  the  right  to  combine  to 
inflict  an  injury  by  withholding  labor  and  inducing  others  to  with- 
hold their  labor  has  been  freely  granted  for  over  seventy-five  years. 
It  has  never  been  questioned  where  the  injury  inflicted  by  the  with- 
holding of  labor  was  incident  to  a  controversy  over  wages,  hours,  and 
working  conditions.  The  injury  done  in  support  of  such  a  controversy 
is  held  to  be  lawful  and  the  combination  inflicting  the  injury  is,  through 
this  special  limitation  of  the  idea  of  conspiracy,  not  in  contemplation 
of  law  a  conspiracy.  The  law,  however,  is  not  so  clear  where  the 
purpose  of  the  combination  is  to  force  the  employer  to  deal  ex- 
clusively with  the  trade  union  or  to  hire  or  discharge  a  particular 
man.  And  in  all  but  a  few  cases  the  combination  has  been  held  an 
unlawful  conspiracy  when  the  purpose  of  inflicting  the  injury  is  to 


Make  Labor  Obey  the  Law      243 

in  these  special  cases  would  contribute  to  serve  the 
public's  own  best  good. 

But  just  as  railroads,  traction  companies,  and  trusts, 
instead  of  using  the  primary  special  privileges  and 
exemptions  which  the  public  had  granted  them  for 
its  own  good,  along  normal  lines  to  serve  the  pub- 
lic interest,  they  merely  used  these  primary  special 
privileges  and  exemptions  as  a  basis  and  excuse  for 
obtaining  or  assuming  more  and  more  special  privi- 
leges and  exemptions,  and  developing  further  and 
further  outside  all  the  restrictions  of  ordinary  law 
till  their  whole  system  became  both  lawless  and 
opposed  to  the  public  good ;  so  has  organized  labor 
used  its  primary  special  privileges  and  exemptions  in 
exactly  the  same  way,  and  to  exactly  the  same  end. 

compel  someone  to  violate  a  contract  or  to  do  something  which  he 
has  neither  power  nor  right  to  do.  Thus  it  seems  that  a  combination 
of  workmen  to  inflict  an  injury  is,  in  law,  a  conspiracy  or  not  a 
conspiracy  according  to  the  purpose  which  the  workmen  have  in 
inflieting  the  injury.  Thus  workers  are  shielded  by  judge-made 
law,  which  they  so  bitterly  condemn,  in  any  degree  of  injury  which 
they  choose  to  or  can  inflict  by  withholding  labor,  no  matter  how 
absurd  their  demands,  if  only  it  appear  that  they  are  unsatisfied  as 
to  their  wages,  hours,  or  working  conditions.  This  is  unquestionably 
the  reason  why  strikers,  irrespective  of  their  real  motives  usually 
assign  the  motive  of  bettering  wages,  hours,  or  working  conditions." 
According  to  technical  legal  definition  therefor  the  right  to  strike 
is  regarded  as  a  "special  limitation  to  the  idea  of  conspiracy"  rather 
than  as  an  "exemption  from  the  law  of  conspiracy."  The  author, 
however,  for  reasons  which  are  developed  in  the  last  chapter,  prefers 
the  simple  phraseology  of  basic  fact  to  that  of  fine  technical  dis- 
criminations and  legal  fictions. 


244        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

For  beginning  with  its  primary  special  privilege 
and  exemption  which  has  enabled  it  to  force  other 
workers  to  join  its  particular  organization  and  sub- 
scribe to  its  particular  theories  in  order  to  earn  their 
living  at  their  trade,  organized  labor  has  persistently 
insisted  on  exercising  more  and  greater  special 
privileges,  many  of  which  are  both  utterly  un-Ameri- 
can and  unlawful,  and  which  have  been  one  of  the 
biggest  factors  in  building  up  its  tremendous  mo- 
nopoly power,  not  only  over  the  worker,  but  against 
the  public.  As  a  result  of  this  continual  assumption 
of  more  and  more  special  privileges  entirely  outside 
of  all  general  custom  and  law,  the  labor  monopoly  of 
to-day  not  only  forces  the  worker  to  join  its  organiza- 
tion and  subscribe  to  its  theories — it  not  merely 
prescribes  the  wages  he  shall  receive  and  the  hours 
he  shall  work  but  it  prescribes  the  kind  of  trade 
he  may  learn,  how  long  he  must  take  to  learn  it, 
the  kind  of  work  he  must  do,  what  employer  he 
may  work  for,  and  what  employer  he  may  not  work 
for, — even  though  he  is  out  of  a  job  and  his  family  in 
want.  No  matter  how  much  his  family  may  need 
money,  he  is  denied  the  right  of  working  harder  and 
making  more  money.  Frequently  in  spite  of  his  am- 
bition and  ability  he  is  prevented  from  taking  any 
advantage  of  opportunities  for  advancement.  And 
he  is  always  likely  to  be  called  out  on  strike  and 


Make  Labor  Obey  the  Law      245 

forced  to  lose  all  of  his  wages  for  weeks  and  sometimes 
months,  even  though  this  may  be  entirely  against  his 
own  interests  and  desires  and  frequently  in  spite  of 
the  fact  that  he  and  a  big  majority  of  his  fellow-work- 
ers, because  of  their  own  interests  and  beliefs  in  the 
merits  of  the  case,  have  voted  against  the  strike. ' 

Again,  beginning  with  its  second  fundamental 
special  privilege — that  of  being  especially  exempted 
from  ordinary  law  against  conspiracy — organized 
labor  has  also  persistently  insisted  on  exercising  more 
and  more  rights  that  are  against  the  law  as  applied 
to  all  other  classes  of  Americans,  and  where  this 
continued  to  be  impossible,  of  forcing  through  the 
adoption  of  special  laws  and  statutes  which  particu- 
larly exempt  it  from  such  laws.  For  organized  labor 
to-day  in  addition  to  being  the  only  class  exempted 
from  the  law  against  conspiracy — in  that  it  is  per- 
mitted to  conspire  against  its  employer — has  assumed 

1  "You  know  what  the  usual  standard  of  the  (union)  employee 
is  in  our  day.  It  is  to  give  as  little  as  he  may  for  his  wages.  Labor 
is  standardized  by  the  trade  unions  and  this  is  the  standard  to  which 
it  is  made  to  conform.  No  one  is  suffered  to  do  mere  than  the  aver- 
age worker  can  do ;  in  some  trades  and  handicrafts,  no  one  is  suffered 
to  do  more  than  the  least  skillful  of  his  fellows  can  do  within  the  hours 
allotted  to  a  days'  labor,  and  no  one  may  work  out  of  hours  at  all  or 
volunteer  anything  beyond  the  minimum. 

I  need  not  point  out  how  economically  disastrous  such  a  regulation 
of  labor  is.  .  .  .  The  labor  of  America  is  rapidly  becoming  un- 
profitable under  its  present  regulation  by  those  who  are  determined 
to  reduce  it  to  a  minimum." — Woodrow  Wilson  (historian)  1909. 


246        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

in  the  use  of  the  sympathetic  strike,  always  con- 
demned by  the  law,  the  right  to  conspire  to  in- 
jure another  outside  employer  with  whom  the  men 
striking  have  no  relation  whatever.  It  has  assumed 
the  right  of  conspiracy  to  injure — by  forcing  his 
men  to  conspire  against  him,  an  outside  employer 
who  may  buy  goods  made  by  any  manufacturer 
against  whom  the  strikers  have  a  grievance,  and 
finally  it  has  conspired,  as  in  the  coal  strike,  the 
outlaw  railroad  strike,  and  many  of  the  largest  and 
costliest  strikes  since  the  war,  simply  and  solely  to 
injure  the  public. 

The  primary  special  privilege  granted  labor  ex- 
empting it  from  the  general  law  against  conspiracy 
to  the  extent  of  permitting  it  to  conspire  against  its 
own  employer,  offers  no  shred  of  legal  justification 
for  conspiracies  to  injure  other  employers  with  whom 
such  conspirators  have  no  relation,  or  for  conspiring 
to  injure  the  public.  Yet  organized  labor  has  for 
years  brazenly  assumed  and  unscrupulously  exercised 
these  utterly  unlawful  special  privileges.  Moreover, 
when  the  Supreme  Court  finally  in  January,  1921,1 
reaffirmed  one  of  these  assumed  special  privileges 
unlawful,  Mr.  Gompers,  with  that  naive  sense  of 
injury  which  is  so  characteristic  of  the  mind  which 
has  grown  to  consider  itself   beyond   all  ordinary 

1  Duplex  Printing  Press  v.  Deering  254  U.  S. — . 


Make  Labor  Obey  the  Law      247 

laws,  when  it  is  forced  to  submit  to  any  law,  con- 
demned the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  as 
reactionary. 

Labor  has  also,  much  as  the  "holding  company" 
did  in  trust  days,  taken  advantage  of  certain  legal 
technicalities  to  keep  itself  outside  of  the  law  as 
regards  responsibility  for  its  acts. 

All  ordinary  individuals  or  groups  of  individuals 
who  wield  power,  handle  money,  enter  into  contracts, 
or  exercise  other  functions  that  affect  other  people, 
must  so  organize — generally  through  incorporation — 
that  those  whom  their  actions  affect,  may  know  who 
is  responsible  for  those  actions — that  those  who  have 
a  right  to  know  may  know  how  money  is  used — and 
in  general  that  the  individuals  who  wield  power  or 
commit  acts  may  be  made  responsible  for  those  acts. 
Great  labor  organizations  handle  immense  sums  of 
money,  often  running  into  tens  of  millions  of  dollars. 
They  often  use  this  money  not  only  absolutely  with- 
out regard,  but  absolutely  contrary  to  public  interest 
and  often  not  only  absolutely  without  regard  for,  but 
absolutely  contrary  to,  the  real  interests  of  the 
members  of  their  own  organizations  who  contrib- 
uted it. 

All  other  organizations  who  enter  into  contracts 
must  keep  those  contracts  or  pay  legally  assessed 
damages  for  breaking  them — and  if  they  otherwise 


248        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

commit  acts  that  injure  other  parties  they  must  be 
responsible  in  damages  for  their  acts.  Organized 
labor  enters  into  contracts,  and  breaks  them  without 
scruple — often  with  immense  loss  not  only  to  the 
other  party,  but  to  the  public — and  otherwise  con- 
tinually commits  acts  that  bring  the  greatest  injury 
to  other  parties  and  the  public. 

Yet  for  the  very  purpose  of  being  able  to  wield 
immense  sums  of  money  for  its  own  secret  and  often 
sinister  purposes,  and  in  order  not  to  be  forced  to 
divulge  to  anyone  how  that  money  is  being  used,  or 
to  be  responsible  to  anyone  for  its  use — for  the  very 
purpose  of  being  able  to  break  its  contract  with 
impunity,  and  of  doing  other  acts  that  injure  other 
people  without  being  forced  to  take  any  responsibility 
for  those  acts,  organized  labor  has  adopted  and  in- 
sisted on  an  "association"  form  of  organization  which 
will  best  contribute  to  its  irresponsibility,  has  con- 
sistently concealed  its  membership  to  assure  its 
irresponsibility,  has  refused  to  incorporate,  has  fought 
every  movement  towards  federal  incorporation  or 
licensing  or  other  regulation  and  has  otherwise  vigor- 
ously insisted  on  remaining  outside  the  fundamental 
law  of  responsibility  commensurate  with  power  to 
which  all  other  classes  of  individuals  or  organizations 
either  submit  or  are  forced  to  submit  as  a  matter  of 
course. 


Make  Labor  Obey  the  Law      249 

In  addition  to  the  special  privileges  beyond  the 
law  as  applied  to  all  ordinary  people  which  organized 
labor  has  merely  assumed  and  exercised,  it  has  also, 
largely  with  the  club  of  the  great  labor  vote,  secured 
the  passage  of  certain  statutes  specially  exempting 
it  from  the  operation  of  many  other  very  wise  and 
important  laws  which  all  other  members  of  society 
must  obey. 

The  Sherman-Anti-Trust  Law  was  passed  in  re- 
sponse to  a  nation-wide  public  demand  that  it  be 
made  impossible  for  any  special  interests  to  get  such 
a  control,  either  through  ownership  or  special  agree- 
ment or  through  any  other  means,  over  our  industrial 
production  or  the  means  of  distributing  it,  as  would 
make  it  possible  for  such  special  interests  to  shut  off 
or  curtail  or  otherwise  manipulate  that  production  so 
as  to  raise  its  price  or  otherwise  use  it  for  the  benefit 
of  such  special  interests  against  the  public  interest. 

But  great  labor  organizations  to-day,  as  has  al- 
ready been  shown  and  emphasized,  are  doing  exactly 
what  the  great  trusts  were  attempting  to  do  a  genera- 
tion ago  and  what  the  Sherman  anti-trust  law  was 
passed  to  prohibit  their  doing — namely,  to  get  such 
a  monopoly  control  in  different  industries  as  would 
make  it  possible  for  them  for  their  own  interest  to 
shut  off  or  curtail  supply  and  thus  unfairly  raise 
prices  to  the  public.    As  a  matter  of  fact,  labor  or- 


250        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

ganizations  to-day  are  going  far  beyond  anything  any 
trust  ever  dreamed  of  attempting,  in  that  they  have 
established  complete  monopolies  in  industries,  and 
are  not  only  artificially  for  their  own  interest  so 
shutting  off  supply  as  to  raise  prices,  but  often  so 
shutting  off  supply  as  to  force  the  public  for  consider- 
able periods  to  do  entirely  without  many  necessaries 
of  life. 

Yet  here  again,  by  methods  that  have  already  been 
described  and  because  neither  the  public  nor  the 
legislators  at  the  time  realized  the  lines  along  which 
organized  labor  was  actually  developing,  the  passage 
of  another  special  statute — the  Clayton  Act — was 
forced  over  specifically  exempting  organized  labor 
from  the  operation  of  the  Sherman  Law  which  all 
other  industrial  and  commercial  individuals  and 
organizations  are  forced  to  obey.  And  it  is  unques- 
tionably this  very  particular  exemption,  placing 
organized  labor  entirely  outside  the  operation  of  our 
perhaps  most  necessary  and  valuable  protective  law, 
which  has  been  the  biggest  factor  in  making  possible 
the  immense  and  sinister  power  which  such  great 
labor  monopolies  as  the  United  Mine  Workers'  Union 
have  and  have  exercised  not  only  over  all  industry 
but  over  all  the  people. 

Moreover,  organized  labor  has  not  only  been  built 
up  on  special  exemptions  of  law  and  special  privileges 


Make  Labor  Obey  the  Law      251 

which  no  other  class  enjoys;  it  has  not  only  con- 
tinually assumed  and  exercised  more  and  more  special 
privileges  and  exemptions  outside  the  law  and  often 
definitely  against  the  law;  it  has  not  only  taken 
advantage  of  certain  technicalities  and  omissions  of 
the  law  to  maintain  a  type  of  organization  which  can- 
not be  made  responsible  for  its  acts  before  the  law ' ; 
it  has  not  only  used  the  club  of  the  great  labor  vote 
to  force  over  legislation  granting  it  still  further 
special  privileges  and  exemptions  from  all  ordinary 
law;  but  its  leaders  have  continually  and  openly 
advocated  defiance  of  the  law. 

The  right  to  conspire  together  to  injure  their  own 
employer  through  a  strike  is  granted  as  a  special 
privilege  to  labor  but  the  law  prohibits  labor,  as  it 
prohibits  everybody  else,  from  conspiring  to  injure 
outside  third  parties.  When  a  Federal  Court 
enjoined  such  a  conspiracy  by  labor,  John  Mitchell 
in  a  public  speech  to  the  workers  said : 

1  Just  as  the  present  volume  goes  to  press  announcement  is  made 
that  the  American  Federation  of  Labor,  with  headquarters  in  Wash- 
ington, is  to  build  up  an  immense  fund  for  "educational  and  de- 
fensive purposes,"  to  be  used  in  strengthening  the  labor  party  in 
general  and  also  for  putting  it  in  the  foremost  ranks  of  the  financial 
institutions  of  the  country. 

To  do  this  it  has  been  decided  to  open  a  $100,000,000  trust  that 
will  receive  on  deposit  the  savings  of  union  men  throughout  the 
country.  Doing  this  as  a  trust  will  exempt  it  from  Federal  and  state 
bank  regulations  and  from  any  taxes  other  than  imposed  upon  an 
individual. 


252        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

"I  shall  as  one  American  preserve  my  liberty 
and  the  liberty  of  my  people  [meaning  his  own  in- 
terpretation of  those  liberties]  even  against  the 
usurpation  of  Federal  judiciaries." 

And  Mr.  Gompers  under  similar  conditions  pub- 
licly said: 

' '  I  desire  to  be  clearly  understood  that  when  any 
court  undertakes  without  warrant  of  law  [meaning 
his  own  interpretation  of  law]  by  the  injunctive 
process  to  deprive  me  of  my  personal  rights  [mean- 
ing his  own  interpretation  of  those  rights]  .  .  . 
I  shall  have  no  hesitancy  in  asserting  and  exercising 
those  rights." 

Again,  labor  leaders  have  continually  and  openly 
preached  the  general  principle  of  disregard  and  de- 
fiance by  labor  of  the  forces  of  law  and  government. 
President  Garrison  of  the  Railroad  Conductors' 
Union  publicly  said : 

"If  you  complain  that  400,000  men  [merely  one 
great  labor  monopoly]  'held  up'  the  government, 
what  will  8,000,000  of  them  do,  if  they  can  to 
'hold  up'  the  government?" 

But  not  content  with  preaching  defiance  of  the 
laws  in  particular  cases,  or  general  defiance  of  the 
laws  and  government,  labor  leaders  openly  declare 


Make  Labor  Obey  the  Law      253 

the  actual  right  of  great  labor  monopolies  to  function 
outside  of  all  ordinary  law  as  a  law  unto  themselves. 
A  labor  union  oath  of  membership  reads, 

"My  fidelity  to  the  union  shall  in  no  sense  be 
interfered  with  by  any  allegiance  that  I  may  or 
may  hereafter  owe  to  any  other  organization,  social, 
political  or  religious,  secret  or  otherwise." 

which  obviously  includes  and  is  interpreted  to  include 
the  laws  and  the  government. 

Frank  Morrison,  Secretary  of  the  American  Fed- 
eration of  Labor,  in  a  carefully  prepared  public  state- 
ment made  in  July,  1920,  says: 

"The  trade  unions  should  be  permitted  to  func- 
tion without  interference  by  any  of  these  agencies 
[the  courts  and  the  legislature].  .  .  .  There  can 
be  no  question  in  modern  industry  which  cannot 
be  determined  quickly  and  satisfactorily  through 
the  trade  union  philosophy." 

Finally  organized  labor  has  constantly  used  threat 
and  intimidation  to  prevent  or  nullify  every  effort 
or  proposed  effort  to  bring  labor  within  the  law.  The 
standard  threat  which  organized  labor  holds  over  the 
head  of  every  elected  judge  to  use  the  labor  vote  to 
defeat  him  for  reelection  if  he  shall  render,  irre- 
spective of  the  merits  of  the  case,  any  decision  against 


254        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

labor,  is  well  known.  The  threats  of  organized  labor 
and  later  the  strenuous  attempts  of  organized  labor 
to  defeat  Governor  Coolidge  because  he  refused 
in  the  police  strike  to  yield  to  organized  labor  by 
turning  over  the  city  of  Boston  to  lawlessness,  is 
notorious.  But  what  the  American  people  perhaps 
do  not  but  should  know,  is  the  fact  that  by  threats 
directed  through  the  local  labor  organizations  at 
home  and  pressure  brought  by  the  powerful  labor 
lobby  at  Washington,  the  Congress  of  the  United 
States  has  for  years  been  so  intimidated  that  every 
appropriation  made  to  the  department  of  justice  for 
the  prosecution  of  suits  under  the  anti-trust  since  19 14 
has  carried  the  express  proviso  that  no  part  of  such 
appropriation  can  be  used  to  bring  such  suits  against 
labor  organizations. 

A  generation  ago  the  whole  nation  became  aroused 
over  the  alliance  between  the  capitalistic  trust  and 
the  corrupt  politician.  What  the  public  to-day  needs 
to  be  aroused  to,  is  the  domination  of  the  labor  trust 
over  the  intimidated  politician. 

When  the  great  trusts  and  other  "plutocratic" 
monopolies,  through  their  far  less  costly  and  extreme 
infringement  of  the  rights  of  all  the  people,  finally 
aroused  and  focused  public  attention  on  the  necessity 
of  finding  some  remedy  against  the  trust  evil,  Ameri- 
can common  sense  saw  at  once  that  the  cause  of  the 


Make  Labor  Obey  the  Law      255 

evil  was  preeminently  "special  privilege"  and  the 
development  through  clever  organization  manipula- 
tion of  a  system  that  was  largely  outside  the  law  as 
ordinarily  applied.  American  common  sense  also 
saw  that  the  simple  obvious  remedy  against  the 
trust  evil  was  to  withdraw  such  special  privileges  and 
exemptions  and  to  reaffirm  the  general  and  basic 
common  law  principles  against  monopoly,  conspiracy 
in  restraint  of  trade,  and  other  forms  of  unfair  com- 
petition in  terms  so  specific  and  sweeping  as  to  bring 
every  ingenious  form  of  capitalistic  monopoly  within 
the  law  and  force  it  to  obey  the  law. 

In  exactly  the  same  way  the  simple  and  obvious 
remedy  against  the  strike  evil  and  against  the  great 
labor  monopolies,  which  are  founded  on  special  legal 
and  social  privilege,  and  have  been  built  up  on  special 
exemptions  from  many  ordinary  principles  and  laws 
and  which  are  chiefly  responsible  for  the  strike  evil, 
is  to  withdraw  as  far  as  may  be  necessary  or  desirable 
those  special  privileges  and  exemptions,  and  other- 
wise bring  organized  labor  at  least  much  more  nearly 
under  the  operation  of  the  law  as  it  is  applied  to  other 
Americans. 


CHAPTER  XX 

AT  THE  BAR  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION 

Organized  labor  is  to-day  functioning  outside  the 
law  in  four  principal  particulars : 

First :  Not  content  with  its  special  exemption  from 
the  law  of  conspiracy,  which  permits  the  workers  to 
conspire  against  their  own  employer,  organized  labor 
is  assuming  and  exercising  the  right  of  the 
sympathetic  strike,  the  secondary  boycott,  the  right 
to  conspire  to  injure  anyone  it  regards  as  unfriendly, 
and  finally  the  right  to  strike  merely  to  injure  or 
coerce  the  public,  all  in  open  and  flagrant  violation 
of  the  law. 

Second :  Taking  advantage  of  certain  legal  techni- 
calities and  through  other  means,  organized  labor  in- 
sists on  maintaining  a  form  of  organization  which 
practically  exempts  it  from  legal  responsibility  for 
its  acts  and  contracts. 

Third:  Organized  labor  openly  preaches  class 
consciousness,  class  interests  irrespective  of  national 
interests,  and  separate  class  rights  superior  to  the 
rights  of  the  people  as  a  whole.     Organized  labor  is 

256 


At  the  Bar  of  Public  Opinion    257 

founded  and  has  developed  on,  the  practice  of  forcing 
workers  to  join  its  class  organization  and  subscribe 
to  its  special  class  theories,  and  through  its  long 
appeal  to  public  sympathy  for  the  worker  has  built 
up  a  widespread  and  deep-rooted  public  acquiescence 
in  such  practice.  As  a  result  of  its  being  able  con- 
tinually to  force  more  and  more  workers  to  join  its 
separate  class  organization  and  subscribe  to  its 
separate  class  theories,  organized  labor  is  continually 
building  up  a  greater  and  more  powerful  separate  and 
antagonistic  class  within  the  nation,  which  is  more 
and  more  obviously  inspired  by  different  ideals, 
which  is  more  and  more  definitely  actuated  by  differ- 
ent interests,  and  which  more  and  more  brazenly 
claims  the  right  to  be  governed  by  different  laws 
than  the  rest  of  the  people. 

Fourth :  This  great  separate  class  movement  by 
forcing  over,  through  threats  and  intimidation,  ex- 
emption for  itself  from  the  operation  of  the  anti-trust 
and  other  laws  has  made  possible  the  building  up  of 
great  labor  monopolies  with  which  it  dominates  many 
and  seeks  to  dominate  all  of  our  great  basic  industries 
in  order  that  it  may  dominate  all  the  rest  of  the  people 
and  force  all  the  rest  of  the  people  to  recognize  its 
special  rights  as  a  special  privileged  class  apart. x 

1  The  English  Coal  strike  is  being  called  just  as  the  present  volume 
is  going  to  press.     Cable  dispatches  quote  the  miners  as  specifically 

n 


558        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

That  strikes,  and  most  other  present  labor  evils,  are 
chiefly  due  to  organized  labor's  insistence  on  operat- 
ing outside  the  law  is  so  obvious  to  every  clear  and 
broad-minded  thinker  on  the  labor  problem — it  is  so 
equally  obvious  that  the  logical  remedy  for  these  evils 
is  to  bring  labor  within  the  law — that  most  of  the 
widely  advocated  plans  which  seek  to  remedy  the 
strike  and  other  labor  evils  are  unanimous  in  seeking 
to  do  this  on  the  fundamental  proposition  of  with- 
drawing at  least  some  of  labor's  special  privileges 
and  exemptions — of  bringing  labor  at  least  more 
nearly  within  the  law. 

Where  these  various  plans  differ  is  in  their  judg- 
ment as  to  which  specific  special  privilege  or  exemp- 
tion should  be  withdrawn  from  organized  labor  or  as 
to  what  special  law,  or  general  principle  of  law,  labor 
should  be  forced  to  obey  in  order  to  accomplish  a 


declaring:  "Unless  we  are  allowed  to  levy  tribute  as  we  would,  we 
shall  make  the  mines  valueless,  even  though  in  so  doing  we  destroy 
our  own  livelihoods,  shut  down  every  British  factory  and  force 
millions  to  starve  or  flee  to  other  places  of  the  earth." 

Frank  Hodges,  secretary  of  the  Miners'  Federation  has  specifically 
boasted:  "If  we  go  down  to  defeat  the  Nation  will  go  with  us"  upon 
which  statement  the  New  York  Tribune  comments  editorially  as 
follows:  "All  of  us,  if  there  is  not  to  be  a  return  to  Stone  Age  con- 
ditions of  life,  must  find  ways  to  uproot  the  idea  that  association 
with  an  industry  gives  one  the  right  to  control  its  fruits  exactly  as 
he  pleases.  Under  the  leadership  of  modern  radicalism  selfish  minor- 
ities have  developed  a  technique  of  mastery  which  must  be  countered 
by  a  new  technique  of  majority  rule." 


At  the  Bar  of  Public  Opinion    259 

maximum  of  relief  for  industry  and  the  public  and  at 
the  same  time  leave  labor  itself  the  maximum  pro- 
tection for  its  legitimate  rights  and  interests. 

One  of  the  most  simple  and  logical  plans  which  has 
yet  been  brought  to  public  attention,  and  one  which 
commands  a  large  following  of  very  able  thinkers  on 
the  labor  problem,  is  that  which  seeks  to  minimize 
the  strike  evil  and  do  away  with  the  labor  trouble 
by  withdrawing  from  labor  its  present  special 
privilege  of  practical  exemption  from  legal  responsi- 
bility for  its  acts.  Labor  to-day  enjoys  this  special 
privilege  by  maintaining  its  organizations  as  "volun- 
tary associations"  which  type  of  organization,  be- 
cause of  present  legal  technicalities,  cannot  be  sued 
at  law  for  damages,  unless  every  individual  member 
of  the  association  is  personally  made  a  defendant. 
As  the  members  of  a  labor  organization  frequently 
number  tens  and  even  hundreds  of  thousands  and 
are  generally  scattered  through  all  parts  of  the 
country,  it  is  obviously  practically  impossible  to  so 
name  each  member  as  a  defendant  and  therefore  to 
sue  the  association  at  all. 

The  means  through  which  it  is  sought  to  with- 
draw from  labor  this  practical  exemption  from 
responsibility  before  the  law,  is  the  enactment  in  the 
various  States  of  a  law  to  the  effect  that  all  voluntary 
associations  may  be  brought  into  court  and  made 


260        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

responsible  for  their  acts  at  law  in  the  same  way  as  a 
corporation  is  brought  into  court  and  made  respon- 
sible for  its  acts,  by  serving  the  association  in  its 
common  name  and  making  service  of  process  on  any 
officer. 

Now  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  the  law  permits 
workers  to  conspire  together  to  strike  for  higher 
wages  or  shorter  hours  or  to  attempt  to  force  other 
demands  on  their  own  employers  even  though  such 
strike  may  bring  serious  damage  to  the  employer. 
Therefore  if  such  laws  were  passed,  making  labor  re- 
sponsible at  law  for  its  acts,  employers  could,  never- 
theless, not  sue  their  own  labor  for  damages  caused 
by  such  strikes.  Thus  such  a  law  would  in  no  sense 
take  away  from  workers  the  use  of  the  strike  weapon 
for  advancing  their  own  legitimate  interests,  of  even 
their  illegitimate  interests,  against  their  own  employer. 
Such  a  law  would,  however,  make  workers  responsible 
at  law  for  breach  of  their  contract — just  as  every 
other  individual  and  organization  already  is — and 
it  would  make  labor  liable  in  damages  for  its  il- 
legitimate and  unlawful  strikes  and  its  many  other 
widely  practiced  acts  which  are  obviously  unfair  or 
unlawful. 

On  the  face  of  it  such  a  law  would  seem  to  promise 
to  go  very  far  toward  stopping  such  practices  just 
as  the  fear  of  the  law  has  gone  very  far  toward 


At  the  Bar  of  Public  Opinion     261 

stopping  similar  unfair  or  unlawful  practices  in 
other  relations  of  life.  Such  an  assumption,  however, 
overlooks  many  of  the  psychological  and  practical 
facts  which  are  at  the  basis  of  the  whole  present 
labor  trouble. 

There  already  are  adequate  laws  which  make  it 
easily  possible  to  sue  labor  organizations  for  damages 
for  its  unfair  or  illegal  act  in  ten  States,  including 
New  York.1  But  employers  so  seldom  care  or  dare 
to  avail  themselves  of  these  laws  that  they  have  little 
practical  value  in  actually  remedying  the  strike  or 
other  evils  of  the  present  labor  situation  for  either 
employer  or  public.  For  instance  one  of  the  ablest 
authorities  on  labor  law  in  the  country  has  stated 
recently  that  the  labor  conditions  brought  out  by  the 
Lockwood  investigation  had  long  been  known  to 
those  close  to  the  local  labor  situation  and  that  the 
employers  had  been  advised  that  legal  relief  could  be 
had  against  many  of  the  most  unbearable  conditions 
if  the  employers  would  fight  the  case.  But  knowing 
well  the  many  long  and  strong  arms  of  the  labor 

1  The  Statutes  of  New  York,  Connecticut,  New  Jersey,  Kentucky, 
Michigan,  California,  Ohio,  Montana,  Rhode  Island,  and  Maryland 
already  have  provisions  by  which  voluntary  associations  may  be 
sued  at  law;. though  in  some  States,  as  in  New  York  for  instance,  the 
suit  must  be  brought  against  the  president  or  treasurer  as  repre- 
sentative of  the  association,  so  that  if  these  two  officers  by  tempor- 
arily leaving  the  State,  or  otherwise,  can  avoid  service  the  suit  can- 
not be  brought. 


262        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

octopus,  the  employers  had  feared  to  make  the  fight 
and  it  was  only  when  public  opinion  became  thor- 
oughly aroused,  through  the  Lockwood  investigation, 
that  even  a  beginning  was  made  to  relieve  both  the 
employers  and  the  people  from  the  strangle  hold  of 
this  one  instance  of  labor-monopoly  lawlessness. 

Moreover,  it  has  been  the  history  of  the  labor 
movement  in  America,  at  least  as  regards  bringing 
general  labor  practices  within  the  law,  that  mere 
legal  victories  have  not  only  been  futile  but 
Phyrrhian — that  they  have  not  only  not  stopped  the 
development  of  irresponsible,  monopolistic,  and  un- 
scrupulously self-interested  labor  power,  but  have 
unquestionably  actually  contributed  to  labor's  devel- 
opment along  this  line  and  outside  the  law. 

Employers  have  won  conspicuous  legal  victories 
against  labor  lawlessness  in  the  Danbury  Hatters' 
Case,  the  Toledo  Telephone  Case,  the  Arkansas  Coal 
Case,  the  Duplex  Printing  Press  Case,  and  in  many 
other  similar  litigations.  But  these  very  defeats 
for  labor  chauvinism  have  only  served  to  furnish 
additional  and  especially  convincing  ammunition  for 
the  labor  leader  who  has  always  argued  that  labor 
must  seek  what  it  wants,  not  through  the  ordinary 
processes  of  law  and  government,  but  through  the 
building  up  of  a  special  class  power  expressed  in  the 
organized  labor  monopoly  which  can  dominate  in- 


At  the  Bar  of  Public  Opinion     263 

dustry  and  through  the  threat  of  the  strike,  force 
the  law  and  the  government  to  yield  it  what  it 
wants. ' 

There  is  no  question  that  such  laws  as  exist,  which 
make  organized  labor  responsible  for  its  illegitimate 
and  unlawful  acts,  have,  in  the  few  cases  where  they 
have  been  evoked,  been  of  great  value  to  the  em- 
ployer and  in  certain  cases  of  great  value  to  the  public 
in  preventing  mere  labor  lawlessness  from  wrecking 
the  employers'  business  or  from  continuing  to  deprive 
the  public  of  public  necessities.  No  fair-minded  man 
but  must  admit  that  the  mere  legal  technicalities 
which  organized  labor  uses  to  evade  responsibility 
before  the  law,  should  be  so  remedied  that  it  is  at 
least  possible  to  keep  labor  from  breaking  its  written 
contracts  or  committing  other  illegitimate  or  illegal 
acts  with  impunity.  But  all  the  circumstances 
surrounding  the  modern  labor  situation — the  practi- 
cal facts  that  employers  and  public  officials,  unless 
forced  to  it  as  a  last  resort,  are  entirely  unwilling 

'In  the  Danbury  Hatters'  Case  the  Supreme  Court  declared 
labor's  action  unlawful  and  granted  damages  to  the  employers. 
These  damages  could  easily  have  been  paid  by  the  union  which  called 
the  strike  and  whose  leaders  were  responsible  for  the  conduct  of  the 
strike,  by  an  assessment  of  about  two  dollars  a  member.  The  union, 
however,  refused  to  pay  the  damages  and  allowed  them  to  be  assessed 
against  the  comparatively  few  union  members  who  had  property 
obviously  for  the  very  purpose  of  forcing  these  men  to  become 
martyrs  to  the  labor  cause  whose  fate  could  be  used  by  organized 
labor  propaganda  to  intensify  labor  antagonism  to  the  law. 


264        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

to  seek  such  relief  at  law  as  they  now  can  get  for 
themselves  or  the  public  through  fear  of  the  many- 
long  and  strong  and  often  hidden  arms  of  the  labor 
octopus — the  fact  that  every  legal  victory  against 
labor  lawlessness  has  merely  been  used  by  labor 
leaders  as  an  argument  for  an  increased  labor  law- 
lessness, only  serves  to  demonstrate  further  the  fact 
that  has  already  been  emphasized,  and  which  neither 
the  lawyer  nor  the  industrial  leader  can  afford  to 
overlook,  namely;  that  the  modern  labor  problem, 
including  the  strike  problem,  is  not  primarily  a  legal 
problem  as  such,  or  an  industrial  problem  as  such,  but 
it  is  fundamentally  a  national  social  problem  which, 
because  of  the  special  circumstance  surrounding  it, 
cannot  only  be  adequately  solved  as  a  national  social 
problem  by  crystallized  public  opinion. 

In  other  words,  just  as  a  generation  ago  the  small 
competitor  who  was  discriminated  against  by  secret 
rebates,  by  price  manipulation,  and  by  other  methods 
of  unfair  competition,  had  little  adequate  legal 
remedy  and  feared  to  use  such  legal  remedy  as  he  did 
have  against  the  great  trusts  and  railroad  systems, 
so  that  it  was  necessary  for  the  public  itself  to  defend 
not  only  the  small  competitor  but  public  interests; 
so  in  the  same  way  and  for  practicaly  parallel  rea- 
sons, there  is  to-day  little  hope  of  any  adequate  basic 
solution  for  the  strike  or  labor  problem  as  it  affects 


At  the  Bar  of  Public  Opinion    265 

the  general  average  employer  and  the  public,  except 
through  public  action  or  at  least  cooperative  action 
supported  by  strong  public  opinion. 

Because  of  the  very  obvious  parallel  between  our 
great  labor  monopolies  of  to-day  and  the  trusts  of  a 
generation  ago;  because  our  labor  monopolies  of  to- 
day are  infringing  public  right  by  shutting  off  the 
supply  and  thus  raising  the  price  of  the  public's 
necessaries  of  life,  in  exactly  the  same  way  and  to  a 
much  greater  degree  than  the  trusts  did  a  generation 
ago;  and  because  through  its  experience  with  the 
trusts  the  public  is  particularly  familiar  with  this 
method  of  procedure,  perhaps  the  most  obvious, 
simple,  and  from  many  points  of  view  the  most 
practical  move  to  bring  labor  within  the  law,  is  to 
prosecute  the  great  labor  monopolies  under  the 
Sherman  Anti-Trust  Law. 

It  has  long  been  generally  thought  that  the 
Clayton  Act  exempted  Labor  from  the  operation  of 
the  Sherman  Law.  But  in  January,  1921,  in  the 
Duplex  Printing  Press  Case  the  Supreme  Court  de- 
clared that  the  Clayton  Act  did  not  exempt  labor 
organizations  from  responsibility  for  damages  for 
acts  in  unreasonable  restraint  of  trade  of  com- 
modities moving  in  interstate  commerce.  Whether 
or  not  the  Supreme  Court  would  also  hold  that  the 
Clayton  Act  is  not  a  bar  to  the  dissolution  of  labor 


266        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

monopolies  under  the  Sherman  Anti-Trust  Act  has 
not  been  determined.  But  in  any  event  the  mere 
repeal  of  the  Clayton  Act  would  at  once  make  pos- 
sible the  dissolution  of  the  great  coal  union  monopoly 
which  the  Supreme  Court  has  already  called  a  "Con- 
spiracy in  unreasonable  restraint  of  trade"  and  which 
has,  and  may  at  any  time  again  that  suits  its  own 
convenience,  shut  off  the  entire  production  of  coal 
from  the  American  people.  It  would  mean  that 
another  outlaw  railroad  strike,  with  its  slow  paralyz- 
ing of  traffic  in  all  parts  of  the  country  could  be  made 
absolutely  impossible. : 

Moreover  such  a  dissolution  would  in  no  way 
interfere  with  the  normal  or  legitimate  functioning 
of  trade  unionism  for  it  would  merely  mean  that 
labor  organizations  would  be  reduced  to  a  size  com- 
mensurate with  their  normal  functions  and  require- 
ments which  would  be  determined  by  a  court  on  the 
merits  of  each  individual  case,  just  as  was  the  practice 
in  the  dissolution  of  our  great  capitalistic  monopolies. 

As  it  has  been  applied  by  the  courts  in  actual 

1  To  decide  that  the  Clayton  Act  is  not  a  bar  to  dissolution  of 
labor  monopolies,  the  court  would  have  to  hold  Section  6  of  the 
Clayton  Act  unconstitutional  on  the  ground  that  it  is  class  legis- 
lation or  give  it  a  narrow  construction.  The  repeal  of  the  labor 
sections  of  the  Clayton  Act  itself,  whose  supposed  force  has  already 
been  half  destroyed  by  the  Duplex  Printing  Press  Case,  would  of 
course  make  available  without  question  a  surer  and  quicker  way  of 
breaking  down  the  power  of  such  labor  monopolies, 


At  the  Bar  of  Public  Opinion     267 

practice  the  Sherman  Anti-Trust  Law  has  protected 
the  public  against  monopoly  and  the  evils  of  mo- 
nopoly control  in  any  industry,  so  far  as  great  capital- 
istic monopolies  are  concerned,  but  it  has  not  only 
not  interfered  with  legitimate  business  operations, 
but  has  in  the  long  run  helped  rather  than  hindered 
the  very  type  of  organization  against  which  it  was 
directed  and  which  at  first  fought  it  most  bitterly. 

The  Sherman  Anti-Trust  Law  would  undoubtedly 
have  the  same  effect  if  applied  to  the  great  monopoly 
labor  organizations  to-day ;  and  not  only  would  the 
public  gain  tremendously  by  being  protected  from 
the  great  nation-wide  strikes  that  paralyze  whole 
industries,  but  the  labor  organizations  themselves 
would  soon  develop  a  healthier  growth,  which  would 
benefit  the  average  worker  as  much  as  it  would  the 
public. 

The  necessity,  however,  for  strong  public  opinion 
before  any  such  remedy  can  be  hoped  for,  has  been 
demonstrated  by  the  fact  that  although  the  Supreme 
Court  has  already  declared  certain  of  our  great  labor 
monopolies  to  be  "conspiracies  in  unreasonable  re- 
straint of  trade ' '  Congress  has  not  only  refused  to 
take  the  initiative  in  providing  for  the  prosecution 
of  such  monopolies  but  has  so  yielded  to  organized 
labor  intimidation  that  it  has  publicly  directed  the 
Department  of  Justice  not  to  bring  any  such  suits, 


268        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

In  the  industries  where  radicalism  has  had  its 
biggest  hold  and  where  the  employers  could  obviously 
not  allow  it  to  get  an  organized  hold  and  in  other 
industries  where  especially  skilled  labor  is  required, 
what  is  called  the '  'Open  Shop  Policy"  as  distinct  from 
the  "Closed  Shop"  or  organized  labor  policy,  has 
long  been  rigidly  insisted  on  by  the  employers.  This 
Open  Shop  Policy  has  also  existed  as  a  matter  of 
course  in  many  other  industries  or  sections  which 
labor  leaders  have  not  had  the  time  or  ability  to 
"organize." 

After  the  whole  country's  very  realistic  and  ex- 
pensive experience  following  the  war  as  to  the  effect 
of  industrial  domination  by  organized  labor,  a  wide- 
spread movement  towards  a  general  Open  Shop 
Policy  began  to  be  agitated  in  the  beginning  of  1920, 
which  was  generally  supported  not  only  by  employers 
but  by  business  men  of  all  kinds  who  were  sufficiently 
in  touch  with  industry  to  realize  the  actual  condition 
of  the  last  few  years. 

The  Open  Shop  Policy  merely  means  a  refusal  by 
employers  to  recognize  labor  claim  to  the  "special 
privilege"  already  referred  to  of  being  allowed  to 
force  all  workers  to  join  the  established  union  and 
support  the  fixed  organized-labor  policy  in  order  to 
be  allowed  to  work  at  their  trade.  The  means,  of 
course,  by  which  this  special  privilege  is  disallowed 


At  the  Bar  of  Public  Opinion     269 

is  the  very  simple  one  of  employing  any  worker  and 
paying  him  wages  whether  he  belongs  to  the  union  or 
not.  The  Open  Shop  Policy  thus  means  that  any 
man  can  work  where  he  wants  to,  at  the  trade  he 
wants  to,  and  in  general  without  the  annoying  and 
often  heavily  handicapping  restrictions  already 
emphasized,  which  organized  labor  in  many  instances 
imposes  on  him.  Moreover,  the  Open  Shop  makes 
no  restrictions  on  any  workers  joining  any  union  or 
on  the  organization  of  a  union  by  all  the  workers. 
It  in  no  way  limits  the  right  or  the  opportunity  of 
any  of  the  workers  to  bargain  collectively  with  their 
employer  or  to  strike  if  they  think  it  necessary  to 
protect  their  rights.  But  it  does  remove  from  the 
workers  the  necessity  so  frequent  under  the  labor- 
monopoly  policy,  of  being  forced  to  strike  for  causes 
in  which  they  themselves  have  no  direct  interest. 
On  its  face  therefore  the  Open  Shop  seems  utterly 
fair  and  American. 

The  argument  against  the  Open  Shop  advanced 
not  only  by  the  very  personally  interested  leaders  of 
organized  labor  but  echoed  by  a  large  proportion  of 
undoubtedly  perfectly  sincere  average  union  mem- 
bers is  twofold : 

First:  That  the  Open  Shop  is  merely  a  cloak  to 
cover  an  attack  on  unionism  through  a  refusal  to 
employ  union  members,  or  through  the  employment 


270        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

of  union  members  only  on  condition  they  will  drop 
out  of  the  union,  or  through  some  other  discrimina- 
tion against  them.  It  is  a  fundamental  principle  of 
the  Open  Shop  Policy  that  it  shall  not  so  discriminate. 
Whether  or  not  this  principle  is  lived  up  to  depends, 
of  course,  on  the  honesty  of  the  individual  employer, 
and  there  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  the  average 
employer  to-day,  even  if  not  sometimes  in  the  past, 
is  keen  minded  enough  to  see  that  unfair  discrimina- 
tion against  union  men,  far  from  relieving  industry 
from  present  labor-monopoly  domination,  will  only 
give  organized  labor  a  weapon  with  which  to  more 
effectually  reestablish  that  domination.  It  is  there- 
fore to  be  hoped  that  the  influence  of  employers  in 
general  as  well  as  of  public  opinion  will  be  strongly 
brought  to  bear  on  any  individual  employer  who  does 
attempt  thus  to  discriminate. ' 

Second :  Organized  labor  has  always  loudly 
claimed,  and  the  average  laborer  unquestionably 
believes,  that  strong  union  organization  has  been 

1  "Of  course,  while  the  public  recognizes  the  right  of  many  men  to 
combine  their  dollars  under  a  single  control  to  purchase  the  labor 
of  many  men,  it  will  recognize  the  right  of  those  many  men  to  com- 
bine their  labor  power  under  single  leadership  to  bargain  for  those 
dollars.  Of  course,  if  the  public  is  called  upon  to  condemn  a  policy 
which  excludes  from  their  trade  workmen  who  do  not  enter  such 
combinations,  it  will  also  condemn  a  policy  which  excludes  workmen 
who  do  enter  such  combinations.  If  the  public  calls  for  the  open 
shop,  it  will  mean  but  one  kind  of  shop — a  shop  in  which  there  is 
no  discrimination." — Law  and  Labor. 


At  the  Bar  of  Public  Opinion    271 

chiefly,  if  not  entirely,  responsible  for  the  wage  in- 
creases and  the  shorter  working  hours  that  all  labor 
now  enjoys.  That  the  basic  reason  which  has  made 
high  wages  and  shorter  hours  possible  has  been  in- 
creased efficiency  in  production,  and  that  organized 
labor  has  been  frequently  actually  a  handicap  to  such 
advancement  through  its  mistaken  efforts  to  decrease 
production  has  already  been  emphasized.  But  it  has 
also  been  pointed  out  that  organized  labor's  constant 
preaching  and  fighting  for  increased  wages  and 
shorter  hours  has  unquestionably  been  a  big  factor  in 
obtaining  their  share  of  the  profits  of  increased  pro- 
duction efficiency  for  the  workers  themselves.  As 
regards  more  modern  industrial  history,  however,  it 
has  been  pointed  out  and  should  again  be  emphasized 
that  the  new  standard  of  big-minded  industrial 
leadership  has  made  the  necessity  of  constant  fight- 
ing by  the  workers  for  a  full  fair  share  in  the  prosper- 
ity of  industry  more  and  more  unnecessary.  Also 
public  opinion  to-day  as  never  before  is  convinced  of 
the  social  desirability  of  good  pay  and  reasonable 
hours.  There  is  no  question  therefore  that  a  general 
Open  Shop  Policy  in  no  sense  contemplates  or  threat- 
ens any  sacrifice  of  the  workers'  past  advances  or  any 
unfair  limitation  of  reasonable  future  advances. 

Particularly  in  view  of  these  facts  and  particularly 
also  until  honest  unionism  has  purged  itself  of  the 


272        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

radical  influences  which  are  either  forcing  its  leaders, 
or  offering  its  leaders  the  excuse,  for  making  unionism 
the  mere  tool  of  illegitimately  furthering  individual 
or  class  interests  against  the  legitimate  interests  of 
the  employer  and  the  public — until  honest  unionism 
shall  suggest,  and  do  what  it  can  to  effect,  some  more 
satisfactory  means  of  protecting  the  employer  and  the 
public  against  the  extreme  danger  and  cost  which 
the  unrestricted  use  of  the  strike  weapon  in  the 
hands  of  unscrupulous  or  chauvinistic  unionism  is 
subjecting  both  employer  and  public,  it  is  difficult  to 
see  how  public  opinion  can  be  expected  to  do  other- 
wise than  approve  of  the  employer  for  acting  on  the 
most  logical  and  ready-to-hand  means  he  has  for 
protecting  himself  and  American  industry  in  general. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  employers,  Manufacturers' 
Associations,  and  Chambers  of  Commerce  who  are 
back  of  the  present  drive  against  the  labor  monopoly 
and  the  strike  evil  through  the  Open  Shop  Movement 
unquestionably  feel  that  they  have  public  opinion 
on  their  side.  Moreover,  they  are  unquestionably 
right  about  this — up  to  a  certain  point. 

There  is  every  evidence  that  public  opinion  is 
to-day  against  labor  and  on  the  side  of  the  employer 
as  it  has  never  been  before.  The  basis  of  this  condi- 
tion of  public  opinion,  however — and  this  distinction 
must  be  carefully  kept  in  mind — is  not  that  public 


At  the  Bar  of  Public  Opinion    273 

opinion  has  become  hostile  to  labor  because  it  has 
become  favorable  to  the  employer,  but  it  has  become 
favorable  to  the  employer  because  it  has  become 
hostile  to  labor. 

In  a  large  measure  the  labor  problem  in  the  past 
has  consisted,  or  seemed  to  consist,  of  a  question  of 
the  best  good  of  the  few,  as  represented  by  the 
employers,  as  against  the  best  good  of  the  many,  as 
represented  by  labor.  When  any  question  involves, 
or  seems  to  involve,  such  a  proposition  American  pub- 
lic opinion  has  unfailingly  been  in  favor  of  the  best 
good  of  the  many.  Moreover  there  is  every  reason 
to  believe  that  in  so  far  as  the  labor  or  any  other 
problem  of  the  future  shall  constitute  a  choice 
between  the  best  good  of  the  few  or  of  the  many, 
public  opinion  in  America  will  always  be  in  favor 
of  the  best  good  of  the  many. 

In  the  present  circumstances  public  opinion  has  in 
no  sense  changed  its  inate  point  of  view  as  regards 
the  best  good  of  the  many  against  the  few,  but 
rather  it  has  come  to  see  that  organized  labor  has 
forced  the  labor  situation  to  a  point  where,  in  the 
question  of  the  best  good  of  the  many  against  the  few, 
organized  labor  itself  now  constitutes  the  few  and 
the  many  consists  of  all  industry — including  a  large 
percentage  of  the  workers  themselves — and  all  the 
public. 
18 


274        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

Detroit,  Michigan,  has  for  years  been  an  Open 
Shop  town  and  the  Open  Shop  principle  has  here 
become  part  of  the  popular  industrial  philosophy  of 
the  community.  Under  this  policy  better  wages 
have  been  paid,  workmen  have  been  more  prosperous, 
there  have  been  practically  no  labor  troubles,  and  the 
growth  and  prosperity  of  the  city  have  been  remark- 
able. To  the  people  of  Detroit,  therefore,  whether 
employer,  laborer,  or  public,  the  Open  Shop  policy 
represents,  through  long  and  intimate  experience 
with  its  actual  workings,  the  best  good  of  the  whole 
community.  With  such  a  public  point  of  view  the 
Open  Shop  offers  a  sound  basis  on  which  labor 
relations  can  be  built  with  confidence. 

For  years  the  Pacific  coast  was  generally  referred 
to  as  the  Labor  Union  Paradise,  and  by  the  same 
token  it  frequently  represented  the  opposite  of  Para- 
dise to  employers,  non-union  workers,  and  the  pub- 
lic. After  years  of  costly  labor  war9 — chiefly  because 
of  fights  between  rival  unions  which  included  arson, 
bomb  outrages,  and  murder — public  opinion  in  Los 
Angeles  years  ago  became  so  incensed  at  organized 
labor  that  it  insisted  on  the  Open  Shop  and  later 
passed  an  amendment  to  the  city  charter — which 
can  only  be  revoked  by  a  two-thirds  vote  of  all  the 
people — making  Los  Angeles  an  Open  Shop  town  by 
law.     For  over  a  decade  of  the  Open  Shop,  labor 


At  the  Bar  of  Public  Opinion 


^75 


troubles  have  been  practically  unknown,  new  factories 
have  moved  in,  wages  are  high,  workmen  prosperous 
and  in  general  actual  results  have  far  exceeded  all 
the  reasonable  expectations  of  those  who  hoped  for 
most  from  the  Open  Shop  law.  Because  the  Open 
Shop  policy  in  Los  Angeles  has  thus  been  brought 
about  by  a  popular  revolt  against  the  tyranny  of 
organized  labor  and  is  based  on  a  conviction  born 
of  conscious  experience  by  all  the  people,  that  it 
represents  the  best  good  of  the  whole  community, 
the  Open  Shop  policy  in  this  instance  again  repre- 
sents an  adequate  foundation  upon  which  to  seek  to 
build  better  and  better  labor  relations. x 

Scores  of  other  individual  American  industrial 
communities,  because  of  their  own  past  troubles  with 
organized  labor  or  because  of  the  satisfactory  results 
which  other  communities  have  achieved  through  the 
Open  Shop  have,  within  the  last  year  or  two,  also 
declared  for  the  Open  Shop.  In  proportion  as  such  a 
change  is  based  on  local  public  opinion's  conscious 
hostility  to  organized  labor  methods  and  particularly 

1  "In  Open  Shop  Los  Angeles  the  number  of  wage  earners  in  the 
period  from  1899-19 14,  increased  from  5173  to  31,352 — an  increase 
of  practically  600%.  ...  In  the  same  period  ...  in  closed  shop 
San  Francisco  where  the  industrial  life  of  the  city  has  been  absolutely 
dominated  by  organized  labor,  there  was  a  decrease  (notwithstanding 
a  great  increase  in  the  population  on  the  whole  Pacific  coast)  in  the 
number  of  wage  earners  from  32,555  to  31,758,  in  spite  of  the  great 
natural  advantages  which  San  Francisco  had." — Walter  Drew. 


276        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

as  the  Open  Shop  shall  in  actual  practice  result  in  a 
definite  reduction  of  labor  trouble  and  in  increasing 
labor's  contentment  and  prosperity  and  the  pros- 
perity of  the  community — in  other  words  in  pro- 
portion as  public  opinion  shall  consciously  accept 
the  Open  Shop  Policy  as  constituting  a  labor  relation 
which  represents  the  best  good  of  the  whole  com- 
munity, to  that  extent  does  the  Open  Shop  offer  a 
hopeful  basis  for  a  readjustment  of  labor  relations. 
Such  local  movements,  however,  even  though  they 
may  become  very  widespread  and  permanently 
established,  locally  through  a  crystallized  local 
public  conviction  in  their  favor,  do  not,  and  in 
themselves  cannot  hope  to  offer  any  adequate  solu- 
tion of  many  of  the  broader  and  more  vital  phases 
of  the  strike  and  labor-monopoly  problem.  For  the 
great  labor  monopoly  that  dominates  our  coal 
industry,  our  railroads,  that  seeks  to  dominate  our 
steel  industry,  that  temporarily  disrupted  our 
clothing  industry,  cannot  be  reached  or  affected  by 
scattered  local  public  opinion  or  the  consequent  local 
adoption  of  the  Open  Shop  in  even  a  great  majority 
of  our  industrial  centers.  Only  national  public 
opinion  can  affect  and  reach  our  national  strike 
problem  and  our  great  national  labor  monopolies 
and  furnish  any  adequate  foundation  for  a  change  in 
the  basic  labor  relationships  in  these  fields. 


At  the  Bar  of  Public  Opinion     277 

Now  national  public  opinion  consists  of  5,000,000 
or  more  very  closely  organized  labor  unionists  to 
whom  the  Open  Shop  is  anathema — of  some  7,000- 
000  farm  families  for  whom  industrial  problems 
as  such  have  little  conscious  interest, l  and  of  many 
other  millions  in  thousands  of  essentially  non- 
industrial  towns  who  together  distinctly  outnumber 
the  population  of  essentially  industrial  communities. 

In  other  words,  national  public  opinion  consists  of 
two  great  industrially  experienced  and  industrially 
interested  groups,  one  of  which,  organized  labor, 
vigorously  opposes  the  Open  Shop,  the  other  of 
which,  unorganized  labor  and  the  unorganized  public 
of  industrial  communities,  is  at  least  potentially 
favorable  to  the  Open  Shop.  In  addition  to  these 
thus  opposed  elements  is  a  very  much  larger  third 
element  which  had  had  little  or  no  personal  experi- 
ence with  strikes  or  other  labor  problems,  and  which 
neither  has  had  or  can  have  any  first-hand  experience 
as  to  the  actual  workings  of  the  Open  Shop.  Also 
the  effects  of  the  strike  evil  and  the  labor  problem 
on    this   element   have   been    chiefly   indirect   and 

«  The  National  Grange  (the  chief  organization  representing  our 
national  farm  interests)  in  its  1920  convention  held  in  Boston 
declared  definitely  for  the  Open  Shop.  This  however  in  no  sense 
means  that  the  individual  farmer,  even  though  he  may  approve  of  the 
Open  Shop  movement  in  a  general  way,  considers  that  he  has  any 
such  vital  interest  in  the  problem  as  is  necessary  to  get  his  active 
support  for  concrete  national  action. 


278        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

complicated  by  other  factors.  Having  thus  little 
conscious  interest  in  any  mere  industrial  problem  as 
such,  and  having  little  personal  consciousness  of  the 
need  or  the  sufficiency  of  the  Open  Shop  as  an  in- 
dustrial remedy,  this  large  element  going  to  make  up 
national  public  opinion  will  be  correspondingly 
difficult  to  arouse  to  an  adequate  support  of  the 
Open  Shop  movement  as  a  mere  industrial  program. 
This  difficulty  is  of  course  exaggerated  by  the  counter 
arguments  of  organized  labor. 

Moreover  in  spite  of  its  supposed  practical  and 
material  mindedness  American  public  opinion  as  a 
whole  has  almost  invariably  been  aroused  over  any 
proposition  only  in  proportion  as  its  appeal  is  broadly 
human  or  social  or  based  on  broad  fundamental 
principle. 

The  Open  Shop  movement  unquestionably  offers  a 
basis  for  labor  relationships  that  is  far  more  American 
and  far  more  in  keeping  with  American  laws  and 
principles  than  the  present  organized  labor  basis  of 
relationship  which  the  American  people  have  largely 
accepted  and  taken  largely  for  granted  merely  on  the 
basis  of  broad  human  sympathy.  In  its  modern 
conception  it  is  fully  as  advantageous  in  most  par- 
ticulars and  far  more  advantageous  in  certain  par- 
ticulars to  the  average  individual  worker.  It  is 
at  least  far  less  susceptible  of  abuse  than  a  labor 


At  the  Bar  of  Public  Opinion     279 

relationship  based  on  industrial  domination  by  labor 
monopolies.  In  Detroit,  Los  Angeles,  and  many 
other  communities,  the  Open  Shop  has  a  record  of 
proved  practical  success  in  higher  wages,  more 
content  prosperous  workers  and  a  minimum  of  labor 
trouble  and  unrest  and  consequently  a  maximum 
of  industrial  and  community  peace  and  prosperity. 
Moreover  to-day  the  Open  Shop  movement  has  the 
backing  of  a  far  greater  number  of  our  ablest  practical 
industrial,  business,  and  economic  leaders  than  any 
other  movement  which  seeks  to  correct  the  glaring 
and  costly  evils  of  our  present  labor  relationships 
based  on  a  domination  by  labor  monopoly. 

But  admitting  all  this  there  is  nevertheless  strong 
reason  to  believe  that  the  Open  Shop  policy  as  a  mere 
industrial  movement — as  a  mere  attack  on  the  evils 
of  organized  labor — is  too  susceptible  of  interpre- 
tation by  casual  public  opinion  as  an  attack  on  labor 
itself,  also  and  particularly  the  Open  Shop  policy  as 
it  is  at  present  preached  and  understood  lacks  a 
sufficiently  broad  social  appeal  to  arouse  general 
public  opinion  to  the  point  of  becoming  convinced 
that  it  should  definitely  give  up  its  widespread  and 
deep-rooted  past  conviction  as  to  the  necessary  basis 
for  labor  relationships  and  definitely  commit  itself 
to  this  particular  different  basis. 

Yet  unless  and  until  public   opinion   does  con- 


280        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

sciously  decide  to  condemn  the  old  and  to  definitely 
commit  itself  to  some  different  basis  of  labor  re- 
lationship, every  victory  for  the  Open  Shop  will  only 
serve  as  an  added  incentive  to  labor,  as  soon  as 
present  public  hostility  is  allayed,  to  revive  the  old 
public  point  of  view  by  new  talk  of  labor  oppression 
and  start  a  new  campaign  of  industrial  warfare  to 
regain  its  power. 

For  years  the  slavery  question  was  fought  on  a 
basis  of  law  and  on  the  basis  of  certain  of  the  limited 
individual  questions  involved.  But  when  Abraham 
Lincoln  reexpressed  the  question  as  a  whole  on  the 
basic  axiomatic  truth  that  a  "house  divided  against 
itself  cannot  stand" — that  "no  nation  can  con- 
tinue to  exist  half  slave  and  half  free,"  he  put  the 
whole  question  in  terms  that  the  nation  could  and 
did  get  together  and  fight  and  win  on. 

For  a  generation  the  trust  question  was  fought 
piecemeal,  on  industrial  and  legal  grounds,  with 
the  trusts  constantly  winning,  till  Roosevelt  stated 
the  problem  as  a  whole  as  a  national  social  issue 
between  "private  greed  and  public  good."  To  such 
an  issue  the  American  people  immediately  rallied, 
and  on  such  an  issue  even  the  Supreme  Court  at  once 
swept  aside  the  carefully  built-up  legal  technicali- 
ties of  fifty  years  and  reversed  even  its  own  former 
decisions  as  to  the  law. 


At  the  Bar  of  Public  Opinion    281 

There  is  no  more  basic  or  more  axiomatic  principle 
of  Americanism  than  that  every  American  has  an 
"inalienable  right  to  life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of 
happiness."  The  right  to  earn  his  living  subject 
only  to  the  laws  and  to  his  own  energy  and  ability 
is  an  axiomatic  corollary,  because  it  is  absolutely 
necessary  to  the  right  to  "life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit 
of  happiness." 

But  due  to  special  developments  and  conditions 
in  our  modern  economic  and  social  life,  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  Americans  are  to-day,  without  any 
reason  in  law  and  irrespective  of  their  own  energy  or 
ability,  facing  this  situation.  On  the  one  hand  great 
artificial  combinations  of  fellow -workers  are  refusing 
them  the  right  to  work,  unless  they  will,  irrespective 
of  their  own  interests  and  desires,  join  certain 
organizations  and  subscribe  to  certain  fixed  beliefs. r 
On  the  other  hand  great  opposing  combinations  of 
employers  are  sometimes  likewise  refusing  them  the 
right  to  work  unless  they  will  refuse,  irrespective  of 
their  own  interests  and  desires,  to  join  these  organi- 
zations and  subscribe  to  these  beliefs. 

The  proposition  therefore  that:  No  man  shall  be 

1  In  many  thousands  of  cases  workers  are  being  deprived  of  the 
right  to  work  at  their  trade  even  where  they  arc  willing  to  belong  to 
the  union  because,  on  account  of  personal  prejudice  or  infraction  of 
arbitrary  rules,  they  are  denied  admission  to  or  expelled  from  these 
labor  monopolies.     Such  workers  are  absolutely  remediless. 


2«2        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

denied  or  refused  the  right  to  accept  employment,  nor 
shall  his  employment  be  terminated  or  otherwise  inter- 
fered with,  merely  because  of  his  being  or  becoming,  or 
because  of  his  failure  to  be  or  become,  a  member  of  any 
trade  union  or  any  similar  organization  merely  con- 
stitutes the  definite  application  of  an  axiomatic 
American  principle  to  a  special  condition  of  modern 
life  which  affects  millions  of  Americans. ' 

As  a  fundamental  principle  of  American  labor  re- 
lationships this  can,  and,  in  proportion  as  its  signifi- 
cance to  the  labor  problem  is  appreciated  it  must, 
command  the  assent  of  every  impartial  American. 

Such  a  basis  of  labor  relationship  would  do  all  that 
its  advocates  claim  the  Open  Shop  does  in  that  it 
would  make  it  impossible  for  the  great  labor  mon- 
opolies to  force  workers  to  join  and  pay  dues  to  the 
union  and  be  subject  to  their  restrictive  rules  and 

1  Labor  leaders  to  whom  this  proposition  has  been  submitted  have 
not  made  any  direct  criticism  of  what  is  so  obviously  plain  justice 
and  plain  Americanism.  They  have,  however,  stated  that  the 
Supreme  Court  decision  in  the  Kansas  and  Adair  cases  would  act  as 
a  bar  to  all  remedy  along  such  lines.  High  legal  authority,  however, 
holds  the  contrary  in  the  following  opinion  which  was  rendered 
on  the  legal  soundness  of  this  principle  as  here  expressed: 

"In  the  case  of  Adair  v.  United  States,  208  U.  S.  161,  and  again 
in  Coppage  v.  Kansas,  236  U.  S.  1,  the  Supreme  Court  held  that 
legislation  intended  to  make  it  a  crime  to  discharge  or  refuse  to 
employ  a  man  because  of  his  membership  in  a  trade  union  was 
unconstitutional,  in  that  it  violated  the  guarantees  of  freedom  of 
contract.  It  is  laid  down  in  these  cases  that  an  employer  may  dis- 
charge an  employee  for  any  or  no  reason;  and  the  employer  has  the 


At  the  Bar  of  Public  Opinion     283 

regulations  where  these,  as  is  frequently  the  case, 
handicap  the  workers'  earnings  and  advancement. 
It  would  make  it  far  more  difficult  if  not  impossible 
for  the  union  to  force  an  artificial  limitation  of 
production.  It  would  make  it  impossible  for  the 
great  labor  monopolies  to  force  workers  in  any  given 
industry  or  shop  to  go  on  strike  against  their  own 
interests,  or  otherwise  arbitrarily  interfere  with  the 
peaceful  and  satisfactory  relations  between  indi- 
vidual employers  and  their  men.  For  such  a  prin- 
ciple is  of  course  merely  the  Open  Shop  principle  itself 
expressed  in  more  broad,  fundamental,  and  social 
terms  and  with  a  double  edge  for  the  protection  of 
both  worker  and  employer. 

Because  of  this  double  edge  such  a  basic  principle  of 
relationships,  particularly  if  it  were  established  by  law 
— and  for  this  reason  it  would  be  to  labor's  interest  to 
have  it  established  by  law — would  remove  labor's  only 

right  to  refuse  to  employ  a  union  man,  just  as  union  men  have  the 
right  to  refuse  to  work  where  nonunion  men  are  employed.  However, 
a  law,  such  as  here  suggested  prohibiting  discrimination  in  employment 
against  either  union  or  nonunion  men  is  free  from  the  objection  that 
it  limits  freedom  of  contract  in  the  interest  of  a  particular  class;  and 
if  it  is  made  to  appear  that  such  a  law  is  necessary  for  the  preserva- 
tion of  industrial  peace  and  freedom,  such  a  law  may  no  doubt  be 
found  to  be  within  the  police  powers  of  the  state  under  which  the 
legislature  can  limit  freedom  of  contract  for  the  preservation  of  the 
public  health,  morals,  safety  or  general  welfare.  The  history  of 
legislation  limiting  hours  of  labor,  minimum  wage,  payment  of 
wages  in  lawful  money,  etc.,  is  in  point." 


284        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

admitted  objection  to  the  Open  Shop  in  that  it  would 
guarantee  the  workers  against  any  discrimination 
merely  because  they  joined,  belonged  to,  or  formed 
a  trade  union.  It  would  merely  mean  that  the  trade 
union  would  have  to  seek  its  membership  on  the  basis 
of  actual  service  instead  of  on  the  basis  of  force. 

From  the  public  point  of  view  such  a  basis  of  labor 
relationship  would  by  these  very  facts  go  far  towards 
curtailing  the  power  of  great  industry-wide  labor 
monopolies  whose  ambitions  for  greater  power  and 
whose  feuds  to  control  that  power  have  been  the 
cause  of  most  of  our  most  costly  strikes. 

Such  a  principle  of  course  offers  only  the  funda- 
mental basis  of  labor  relationship — it  is  of  course  only 
the  beginning  of  an  attempt  towards  solution  of  the 
strike  and  general  labor  problem  as  they  have  de- 
veloped under  organized  labor  domination.  Public 
interest  may  require  in  addition  the  dissolution  of 
certain  great  labor  monopolies  which  threaten  that 
interest.  Both  labor's  interest  and  public  interest 
may  require  a  minimum  living  wage  law — above  which 
workers  will  be  paid  in  proportion  to  their  ability 
and  ambition — to  take  the  place  of  the  present  union 
system  of  protecting  the  poorer  worker  by  handi- 
capping the  better.  Public  and  labor  and  employer 
interest  unquestionably  demand  provisions  for  making 
both  labor  and  employer  live  up  to  their  contracts, 


At  the  Bar  of  Public  Opinion     285 

for  in  all  human  relations  this  is  imperative  to  peace- 
ful relations.  Many  other  things  must  be  done,  and 
continue  to  be  done  for  better  and  better  industrial 
harmony  and  justice.  But  first  of  all  labor  relations 
require  an  adequate  foundation — a  sound  basic 
principle  to  build  on. 

The  present  organized  labor  principle  of  industrial 
relationships  was  born  out  of  eastern  European  class 
warfare  and  the  longer  and  wider  it  has  been  applied 
to  American  labor  relations  the  more  it  has  made  for 
class  consciousness,  class  privilege,  class  antagonism, 
and  similar  anti-Americanism. 

Organized  labor's  fundamental  principle  of  in- 
dustrial relationships  is  to-day  before  the  bar  of 
public  opinion.  It  is  indicted  not  only  for  the  great 
strike  epidemic  which  cost  the  whole  country  billions 
of  dollars  and  every  family  in  the  country  their  share 
of  this  loss,  but  chiefly  on  the  grounds  that  that  strike 
epidemic  was  merely  one  symptom  of  a  cancerous 
foreign  growth  with  which  that  principle  has  inocu- 
lated our  economic  and  social  vitals  and  which  from 
its  very  nature  it  constantly  works  to  exaggerate 
and  spread. 

American  industrial  progress  requires  that  that 
principle  shall  no  longer  be  permitted  to  vitiate  and 
threaten  American  industrial  and  social  life — that 
instead   American    public   opinion    shall    definitely 


286        The  High  Cost  of  Strikes 

decree  some  other  basic  principle  for  American 
industrial  relations  which,  as  regards  the  worker  and 
the  employer  and  the  public,  shall  be  100%  American. 
The  future  of  American  economic  and  social  de- 
velopment, whether  America  is  to  be  all  American 
or  a  hyphenated  polyglot,  depends  on  the  verdict. 


University  of  California 

SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 

305  De  Neve  Drive  -  Parking  Lot  17   •   Box  951388 

LOS  ANGELES,  CALIFORNIA  90095-1388 

Return  this  material  to  the  library  from  which  it  was  borrowed. 


MM  0 1  2007 


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